


"'■^ 



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LOUIS HOUCK 



Memorial Sketches 

of 

Pioneers 
and Early Residents 

of 

Southeast Missouri 



By Louis Houck 



Cape Girardeau 

NABTBR BROS., PRINTERS 

1915 






Gift 

Author 

kn 13 «8 



Memory is the treasury and ^ardian of all 
things.— Cicero. 

The aid of a good citizen is never without a 
beneficial effect, for he assists by everything he 
does, by listening, by looking on, by his presence, 
by his nod of approbation, even by his obstinate 
silence, and by his very ga,it.— Seneca. 



Contents 



PAGE 

Louis Lorimier 1 

Alexander Buckner ------ 19 

William Caton Ranney ----- 34 

Matilda Rodney Block ----- 45 

William Ballentine ------ 55 

Robert Sturdivant ------ 61 

Zerilda Byrne - - - - , - - 73 

Timothy O'Keeffe - 77 

Jane Day Glasscock ----- 81 

Leo Doyle 87 

Martin Linn Clardy 93 

Thomas^ Beck with 109 



For private distribution only, these addresses and 
memorial sketches, scattered leaves from the tree of 
my literary life, have been gathered into this little 
volume. With the exception of Louis Lorimier and 
Alexander Buckner, I attempt to record the life story 
of dear and loved personal friends, unknown to the 
wide and tumultuous world, and who quietly after a 
life of usefulness went to the realms beyond. Their 
memory is dear to me and fondly I hope, for a little 
time at least, to preserve their honored names and 
virtues in these pages. 

' ' Ebnwood, ' ' 
January, ig/j 



Louis Lorimier 

Founder of Gape Girardeau* 

AFTER all, how short a span of time is a century! 
It is an invisible atom in the eternity of time. 
Yes, less than an atom, a passing thought. For 
this reason, a memorial meeting to honor Louis 
Lorimier, the founder of our city, after he has gone 
to his long rest this day one hundred years ago, is 
not altogether out of place. 

As we look backward, the time since he was 
buried in the old graveyard overlooking the river 
seems like a day. 

It is only when we contemplate the changes that 
have taken place here and in our country, that we 
fully realize how long it is since he died. 

When Lorimier died we had no daily newspaper 
to record every detail of his adventurous life, no 
camera to instantaneously preserve for us a correct 
picture of his form, his figure, his features, or a 



•Address delivered at court house of Cape Girardeau on June 26, 1912- 



2 Louis Lorimier 

phonograph capable of transmitting to future time 
the very sound of his voice. 

Although he was an important personage, not 
only here, but in the great Indian country along 
Lake Erie, we are compelled to rely for details of 
his life on such scanty facts as have escaped obliv- 
ion by accident. No one, when he died, took the 
trouble to preserve for us in writing any incident 
of his varied, enterprising and stirring life. 
Everybody knew all about it then, and that was 
deemed enough. Why preserve a chronicle of events 
that everybody knew, white settlers as well as the 
Indians? We may be certain that all the promi- 
nent settlers of that early time attended his funeral, 
as well as his Indian relatives: A son of a brother 
of Lorimier named Ini-Oi-Pi-Ai-Chi-Ca, and Leno- 
Wa-Ka-Mi-Chi-Ca, the wife of his brother, we may 
be sure came down from the Big Shawnee village 
on Apple Creek to attend his funeral, and so also 
Kau-Ai-Pi-Chi-Ca, a sister of his wife. It is also 
certain that many of the Indians were assembled 
around his grave at that time. They all knew of 
the events of his eventful career. And no doubt a 
modern reporter, if he could interview those who 



Louis Lorimier 3 

attended his funeral at that time, would find much 
to interest the readers of today. But no one was 
then present who took an interest to record his 
interesting career, and so the great salient incidents 
of his life were allowed to be forgotten. We know 
just enough to feel that his life was a restless 
romance, for, in a way, every life is a romance, 
sometimes dull, sometimes laughable, sometimes 
adventurous, sometimes heroic and more often 
tragic. 

Lorimier's life from the day of his birth until 
the day of his death at Cape Girardeau (also called 
by him Lorimont) was not a dull life, but a life of 
adventure, of exploits, of hardships, of self-denial, 
of enterprise and achievements. 

His life naturally divides itself into two parts, 
that is to say, his life east and his life west of the 
Mississippi. 

Born at Lachine, on the Island of Montreal, and 
on the banks of the St. Lawrence, he naturally from 
earliest infancy, became interested in the Indian 
trade, and in his maturer age engaged in that trade. 
The Indian trade was the great business of that 
time. The Lorimier family seems to have been 



4 Louis Lorimier 

identified with this trade from a very early period. 
His ancestor was Guillaume Lorimier, a native of 
Paris, who arrived in Quebec, Canada, in 1695 and 
died in Montreal in 1705. He was a captain in the 
French service. He commanded some of the French 
forts on the St. Lawrence, and following that river 
finally reached the Island of Montreal, and where, 
as stated, he died. It is certain, one of his descen- 
dants, the father of Louis Lorimier, settled at Lach- 
ine, and during the French occupancy of Canada 
traded with the Miami Indians then living in Ohio. 
During the French and Indian war a Lorimier, un- 
doubtedly his father, under the command of St. Luc 
de la Corne, was in command of the Miami Indians 
at the capture of Fort William Henry. Montcalm 
was in command of the French forces on that occa- 
sion. The fort was surrendered to the French in 
1756, and Lorimier, at that time thirteen years of 
age, very probably accompanied his father and the 
Indians on their march from Ohio to the seat of 
war in New York. He there saw the regiments from 
France under Montcalm engaged in actual war as 
he had never seen it before among the Indians. 
No doubt like other boys he noted many things that 



Louis Lorimier 5 

were new and curious to him. Although he never 
enjoyed the benefit of what we now consider an edu- 
cation, for he never attended school, could not read, 
and write only his name, he received the education 
of the woods and prairies, of the rivers and lakes. 
Indians were the companions of his youth, and with 
them he roamed through the land when not at his 
trading post in the wilderness. His education was 
essentially a military education, an education for 
war, and General Collot, who visited him at his post 
in Cape Girardeau in 1796 says that he had a mil- 
itary education. 

After the surrender of Canada to the English in 
1769, Lorimier's father was engaged in the In- 
dian trade at the portage of the two Miamis, at a 
place called Pickawillany. This trading post was 
also known as Lorimier's station, or "The French- 
man's Store. " A creek or branch of a river in that 
locality in Ohio, to this day bears his name. He 
and his father traded here with the Miamis, Shaw- 
nees, Delawares and other Indians. We have no 
record of when his father died. But during the 
Revolutionary war, Lorimier himself sided with the 
English— he was a violent Tory. From his station 



6 Louis Lorimier 

went out many of the Indian forays against 
the American settlements of Western Pennsylvania 
and Kentucky. At that time Lorimier station was 
well known both in Europe and America, and we 
have reason to believe that Lorimier himself was 
not an idle looker-on in that eventful and exciting 
period. He was a natural leader among the In- 
dians—a master of their language. His wife was 
the daughter of a Shawnee chief. He was no doubt 
adopted by them, and a chief among them. It 
would be interesting to know his Indian name. His 
influence among the Shawnees and Delawares was 
unbounded. In 1778, during the Revolutionary war, 
at the head of a band of forty Shawnees and Miamis 
he made a raid on Boonsborough, in Kentucky, cap- 
tured Daniel Boone, and carried him and his family 
to Chillicothe, then the principal Shawnee and Mi- 
ami village north of the Ohio. In this expedition 
he was accompanied by another Frenchman named 
St. Aubin. 

After the Independence of the United Colonies 
was recognized, his activity did not cease. The 
Indians were not satisfied. The British loyalists 
were all disappointed, the Indians would not recog- 



Louis Lorimier 7 

nize the authority of the new Federal government, 
nor concede the right to this government to inter- 
fere with their lands, nor acknowledge its terri- 
torial jurisdiction. The British traders remained 
at their posts in northwestern Ohio, Lorimier 
among them. The British refused to vacate Detroit 
on one pretense or another, and thus the Indians 
were encouraged to resist. English officers sur- 
reptitiously fomented trouble. An Indian war re- 
sulted. The English supplied arms and ammuni- 
tion. During all this time Lorimier's Station, or 
the "Frenchman's Store," was a centre of activity. 
The overwhelming defeat of St. Clair by the Indians 
followed. The Shawnees, Delawares and other In, 
dians invaded the white settlements and killed 
white settlers along the banks of the Ohio and in 
Kentucky. Finally the Kentuckians organized an 
expedition, invaded the Indian country and de- 
stroyed the "Frenchman's Store," and Lorimier had 
to flee for his life. He established another trading 
post farther west known as Lorimier's encamp- 
ment, but afterwards was driven out by the army 
of Anthony Wayne and his encampment destroyed. 
During all this time, Lorimier we can well imagine, 



8 Louis Lorimier 

played no inconsiderable part in the counsels of the 
Indians. But the Indians were finally subdued and 
Lorimier retired with a part of them to the Wabash, 
secured new goods from an American fur trading" 
concern known as the Miami company, and after a 
year or so of unprofitable trade on the Wabash, 
ruined financially, with a band of Shawnees and 
Delawares in about 1786, moved across the Missis- 
sippi into Upper Louisiana. This, in short, is an 
outline of his life on the east side of the Missis- 
sippi so far as it can be traced. 

He settled on the west side of the Mississippi by 
permission of the Spanish government. He at first 
established himself on the Saline, six or seven miles 
west of the present town of St. Mary's, at a place 
still called the Big Shawnee spring. Here he had 
a trading post in partnership with Henry Peyroux, 
who at that time was commandant of Ste. Gene- 
vieve. He also acted as interpreter for the Span- 
ish government. At the instance of the Spanish 
officials he solicited Delawares and Shawnees and 
other Indians to settle in the Spanish Dominion, 
and many of these Indians, overwhelmed and cowed 
as they had been by the American forces, were 



Louis Lorimier 9 

anxious to leave the country. On the other hand, 
the Spaniards were just as anxious for these Indians 
to settle on the west side of the river in order to 
protect the Spanish settlements against the Osage 
Indians. The Osages were less civilized and were 
more barbarous than the Indians on the east side 
of the river. Up to that time they had but little 
intercourse with white people. The Shawnees, 
Delawares, Miamis and Loups on the other hand, 
had traded and trafficed with white men and set- 
tlers for over one hundred years. In order to secure 
a settlement of these Shawnees and Delawares, the 
Spanish government made them a grant of land 
extending from Apple Creek to the St. Francois 
and further west, embracing several hundred 
thousand acres of land. Lorimier thus became a 
trusted Spanish agent in Indian aifairs. As such 
he was frequently called to St. Louis to act as ad- 
visor and interpreter. He remained at Big Shaw- 
nee Springs until these Indians were well settled 
and established in a large village on Apple Creek, 
and then finally moved to the present site of Cape 
Girardeau in about 1792. His influence among the 
Indians was found so very useful to the Spanish 



10 Louis Lorimier 

government that the Spanish officials realized the 
importance of securing him an independent trading 
post. All the Spanish post commandants were 
engaged in trade more or less, and of course Lori- 
mier could not successfully manage the Indians in 
a district the trade of which was claimed by another 
district commandant. At that time the boundar- 
ies of the Ste. Genevieve district extended as far 
south as Apple Creek, and the New Madrid district 
extended north to Apple Creek or Cinque Homme 
(more properly St. Come) , and the Indian trade of 
territory was claimed by these commandants, and 
when Lorimier first established himself at Cape 
Girardeau, in the New Madrid district, he inter- 
fered with the trade claimed by the commandant 
of New Madrid, and this caused some friction. 
Lorimier, however, traded on the St. Francois, 
White and Arkansas Rivers under some kind of 
license, and finally in 1793 secured a concession 
from Carondelet to establish himself where Cape 
Girardeau is now located, and was made com- 
mandant of a new district. This location was also 
claimed by Gabriel Cerre one of the great Indian 
traders of that time, and after Carondelet had 



Louis Lorimier 11 

granted the land here to Lorimier, Cerre made a 
claim for it, and his cause was laid before Gayoso, 
then the Governor General of Louisiana, and decided 
in favor of Lorimier because of the great service 
Lorimier had rendered the Spanish goverment, 
and Cerre was promised compensation elsewhere. 
But Thomas Portelle, commandant of New Madrid 
at the time when Lorimier first established himself 
at Cape Girardeau, came in conflict with him as to 
his jurisdiction in what is now Scott and Mississippi 
counties. Peyroux, who succeeded Portelle in New 
Madrid, also objected to land grants made by Lori- 
mier, but the boundary line between the Cape Gir- 
ardeau and New Madrid districts was established 
by Caso Calvo about five miles below the present 
town of Commerce, and Soulard, the surveyor of 
upper Louisiana under the Spanish government, 
was ordered to survey the line west to the St. 
Francois River. Lorimier was conceded by Caron- 
delet a grant of a league square, about 6,000 acres, 
where the city of Cape Girardeau is now located, 
and this grant was afterwards confirmed by the 
United States. All the Indian trade from Cape Gir- 
ardeau southwest to White River and the Arkan- 
sas, was also granted to him. 



12 Louis Lorimier 

These great favors were shown Lorimier princi- 
pally on account of his invaluable services in 1793 
and 1794 when Upper Louisiana was threatened by 
an invasion of American filibusters. The Spanish 
officials of Upper Louisiana then greatly relied on 
Lorimier and his Indian allies to secure proper in- 
formation as to possible attacks upon the colony. 
This was a period of incessant activity for Lorimier, 
as fully appears from his journal of that eventful 
period that has been preserved in the Spanish ar- 
chives.^ He travelled up and down the river at all 
seasons seeking to ascertain what movements pos- 
sibly might be made by filibustering expeditions, 
rumors of which filled the whole country. The 
Indians from the east and west side of the river 
assembled here then, and were fed by Lorimier, 
received presents, held big counsels and were sent 
out as spies to ascertain what movements of hostile 
character were being made on the Ohio. But this 
threatened invasion came to naught. 

From 1792 until the purchase of the country by 
the United States, Lorimier devoted himself to the 
development and upbuilding of the Cape Girardeau 

(1) This journal published iu Houck's Spanish Regrime in Missouri, 
Vol. II, p. 59, was written by his secretary, Louis Francois Largrau. 



Louis Lorimier 13 

district. He became a Spanish subject in 1794 and 
the oath of loyalty was administered to him by the 
Lieutenant-Governor Trudeau. During this period 
he carried on a large fur trading business, and in 
one of his letters, Carondelet complains that he 
bought too many of his goods from the Americans, 
and cautioned him not to do so. In 1796 the first 
Americans came to the Cape Girardeau district and 
settled near his grant, encouraged by Lorimier 
and his able and talented secretary Bartholomew 
Cousins. In 1804 when the country was purchased 
by the United States, Stoddard remarked that the 
Cape Girardeau district was inhabited by the most 
intelligent and progressive farmers on the west 
side of the river. 

In 1803, Lorimier participated with the Cape 
Girardeau company in an expedition to New Mad- 
rid. This was the last military demonstration of 
the Spaniards in Upper Louisiana. 

During the Spanish dominion, Lorimier laid out 
no town here. A few trading houses were located 
along the river bank, a gunsmith and a blacksmith 
shop existed, and that is about all. Bartholomew 
Cousins' house stood where now is the St. Charles 



14 Louis Lorimier 

Hotel. Lorimier's house stood where now is located 
the Parochial school, not very for from the Big^ 
Spring on Fountain Street, so named on account of 
this spring. His house must have been painted 
red, for it was known as "The Red House," and 
was a stopping place for all the Spanish officials 
that came up and down the river, as well as of 
the American officials who came up the river to go 
to Kaskaskia. When the United States took pos- 
session of Upper Louisiana, no town was estab- 
lished in the Cape Girardeau district, and in order 
to secure the seat of justice for the Cape Girardeau 
district, Lorimier donated the four acres of ground 
where this Court House now stands and $200 in 
labor, to erect a court building out of logs. After 
the purchase, he was appointed one of the Judges 
of the Court of Common Pleas and Quarter sessions, 
but held this position for only a short time. He 
held no other official position afterwards. In 1808 
he laid out the old original town and sold some lots. 
But when his Spanish title was rejected by the 
first Board of Commissioners in 1807, no sale of 
lots could be made, and owing to the uncertainty 
of his title and doubt as to the final outcome, in 1815 



Louis Lorimier 15 

the county seat was moved from Cape Girardeau 
to Jackson, and Jackson became the principal town 
of the district and Cape Girardeau a mere landing. 
It was not until 1820, eight years after Lorimier's 
death, that it became a settled belief that Lorimier's 
title and the title to other lands similarly situated, 
would in the end be confirmed by the United States. 
But then the moment for the rapid growth of a 
town here and the first wave of emigration into the 
Louisiana territory had passed. It was not until 
1840 that Cape Girardeau emerged from under the 
cloud cast over the town by the rejection of the 
Lorimier claims in 1807. 

A few other facts concerning Lorimier, we find 
in the old records. He evidently had an old fash- 
ioned idea that he ought to pay his debts. When 
he left the United States, he owed some money, 
and his creditors did not hesitate to follow him 
across the river to make collections. He did not 
avail himself of the plea that they could not bring 
suit in a foreign country and all that, but settled 
in deer skins, the currency then equivalent to cash, 
that is by delivering deer skins, or giving his notes 
payable in deer skins at some future time. And we 



16 Louis Lorimier 

have the testimony of the Miami company that he 
paid. Also the records in Cahokia show that he 
arbitrated contested claims. Evidently he did not 
hunt law suits. 

Another case we have. He was visited by Gen- 
eral Ben Logan from Kentucky, to reclaim a col- 
ored woman which had been taken by the Indians 
and sold by them to Lorimier. He refused to 
give up the woman, claiming that she was the only 
help he had, but he settled with Logan for the 
woman by giving him a lot of ponies. 

He lost $1,000 on abet with Andrew Ramsay on 
a horse race. He gave his note to pay the debt 
and paid $800 during his life, the balance was 
allowed against his estate. Evidently he believed 
in paying his losses when he gambled on a horse 
race. 

Before the Louisiana purchase, a Delaware In- 
dian, who had murdered a white man in Illinois, 
escaped across the river into his district, expecting 
to escape justice, but he was mistaken. When 
Lorimier was advised of the facts he traced out the 
Indian, captured him and sent him back to Illinois 
where afterwards he was hanged in Cahokia for 



Louis Lorimier 17 

Tiis crime. The thanks of the United States were 
conveyed to him by direction of President Jefferson 
through Marquis de Casa Yurjo, the Spanish Am- 
bassador. 

On another occasion a horse thief was appre- 
hended in his district. He was summarily dealt 
with, receiving thirty lashes on his bare back and 
then told to leave the district, and never to return. 
All without lawyers, without a trial by jury and 
without expense. 

His goods as merchant and trader he purchased 
principally from William Morrison of Kaskaskia, 
but it is not to be supposed that he had a store like 
we now have. The Indian traders at that time had 
all their goods packed in chests and boxes, and as 
customers would call, settlers or Indians, these 
goods were displayed when called for, and not 
otherwise. He was a warm personal friend of 
Pierre Menard of Kaskaskia, afterwards Lieuten- 
ant Governor of Illinois, and of Francois Valle, 
commandant of Ste. Genevieve. 

We know little of his personal appearance. I 
have heard it said, forty years ago, by those that 
knew him personally, that he was a person of 



18 Louis Lorimier 

medium height, that he had black eyes and black 
hair, that he was not corpulent, and that he wore 
a very long quei|e, which he sometimes used as a 
riding whip. That he usually rode a pony. That 
he was tactiturn, perhaps a habit acquired by long 
association with the Indians. That he was quick 
and very energetic in his movements, and very 
active. 

And this is about all I can tell you about Louis 
Lorimier, except that he enjoyed the unlimited 
confidence of De Lassus, Lieutenant Governor of 
Upper Louisiana, and that General Salcedo the 
Governor General of Louisiana highly recommended 
him as a person to be trusted in every way to the 
government of the United States. And all of 
which would tend to show that he was a man of 
high character and integrity. 



Alexander Buckner 

Third United States Senator of Missouri* 

TT TE meet today to pay posthumous honor to one 
' • of the pioneers of our country, to pay him 
those funeral honors he did not receive, although oc- 
cupying an exalted public position, at the time when 
he fell a victim to a dreadful epidemic. In the anx- 
iety and struggle, excitement and enjoyment of 
the present we too often forget the men of the 
past. Soon all memory of their labor vanishes 
from the common recollection of men. Soon their 
very names become an unfamiliar sound. Soon 
neglected and forgotten are their graves. Thus 
one whose exploits have been forever embalmed 
in the brilliant and classic pages of Washington 
Irving lies buried in this graveyard, but no stone 
marks the last resting place, and no one living can 



•Address delivered at his re-interment in the old cemetery of Cape Girar- 
deau before the Grand Master of Masons of the State of Indiana, Hon. 
Mason I. Niblack and Grand Secretary Hon. William H. Smythe, and 
members of St. Marks lodgre of Cape Girardeau and others— September 
28th, 1897. 



20 Alexander Buckner 

now point to the spot where was buried the heroic 
and chivalric Robert McClelland. Yet it is the 
work of the men of the past bequeathed to us that 
is our priceless heritage. It is because they labored 
and suffered, dared and did, thought and executed, 
because they laid deep the foundation of our civic 
institutions that we today are enjoying a material 
prosperity, the marvel of the world. And how little 
we think of the past. How little we cherish the 
recollection of our great commonwealth builders. 
How indifferent to us the story of the small begin- 
nings from which have grown these great states, 
imperial in resources and power. 

And only one hundred years ago this great val- 
ley was a primeval wilderness. True, the advance 
guard of our civilization had crossed the Alle- 
ghenies. Slowly and laboriously with ox teams 
these adventurous spirits pushed into this Valley of 
Jehosaphat, from the frontiers of Pennsylvania, 
Virginia and the Carolinas, beset by dangers and 
suffering every privation. Through the vast wil- 
derness they opened roads, in the vast wilderness 
they reared their log cabins, in the vast and un- 
broken forest they cleared their farms, planted the 



Alexander Buckner 21 

seeds of the great commonwealths that in an un- 
broken cordon extend through this great valley, 
and laid the foundation of many of the cities that 
now sparkle like jewels in the land. They were a 
breed of marvelous men, those early pioneers. 
They were bold and brave, self-reliant and inde- 
pendent, adventurous and prudent, far-seeing and 
sagacious, and, with all our boasted intelligence 
and education, far superior to us in all those ele- 
ments necessary to perform well the great work of 
laying deep the foundation of a free government. 
We give their work rarely a passing thought. 
What indifference! What ingratitude! Among the 
ancients, divine honors were paid the founders of 
cities and states. The adventurers who planted a 
new city or state on the shores of far distant seas 
or in foreign and barbarous lands were celebrated 
in poetry and song, annual festivals and games 
commemorated the auspicious event, marble col- 
umns recorded their honored names, and the glow- 
ing canvas told the eye the wondrous story. 

As one of the most distinguished pioneers, not 
only of Missouri, but of Indiana and the west, we 
must consider Alexander Buckner, to whose mem- 



22 Alexander Buck'mr 

ory today we pay honor. He was a native of Ken- 
tucky, born in 1785, the son of Nicholas Buckner. 

Nicholas Buckner doubtless was a descendant 
of the Buckners that settled in Gloucester county, 
Virginia, as far back as 1635. Like so many Vir- 
ginians of that period, he came to Kentucky, then 
a county of Virginia, to take possession of a land- 
claim received for military services, and settled in 
what is now Jefferson county, or, as then said, near 
the falls of the Ohio. 

And in Kentucky Alexander Buckner was born. 

When he first saw the light of day the Revolu- 
tionary war had just ended. Some of the soldiers 
of the Revolution must have been his earliest 
friends, for Kentucky was principally settled by 
Revolutionary soldiers. To Kentucky many of 
these soldiers, who had been bankrupted by the 
great struggle, or were filled with aspiration and 
ambition, moved to better their fortunes, as to a 
new Eldorado. For it must be remembered that 
these soldiers of the Revolution received no pen- 
sion. Around and near the falls of the Ohio espec- 
ially did these soldiers settle. There the great 
hero, General George Rogers Clark, lived, who. 



Alexander Buckner 23 

with a small band of Virginians, had conquered the 
vast territory between the Ohio and the Great 
Lakes and the Mississippi. In the neighborhood of 
the falls many of his officers and soldiers had ac- 
quired land, and on the opposite shore in Indiana 
the state of Virginia had located a military grant 
to reward Clark and his men. 

Alexander Buckner grew up among these Rev- 
olutionary patriots. His earliest recollections must 
have related to the transcendent struggle. The 
heroes of this struggle he always loved and cher- 
ished, He was always ready to show them every 
honor. 

After he came to our county, at the funeral of 
Colonel Ranney — a revolutionary soldier, who 
fought under Washington at Monmouth, and also 
participated in the war of 1812, a pioneer, too, of 
Indiana — Mr. Buckner delivered the funeral ora- 
tion. 

Where Senator Buckner was educated cannot 
now be ascertained, but that he received a liberal 
education is manifest from the papers and letters 
still in existence written by him. That he was a 



24 Alexander Buckner 

man of literary tastes is shown by the library in- 
ventoried by his executor after his death. 

He was a lawyer by profession. In 1812, at the 
age of twenty-seven years, we find him a resident 
of Charlestown, Clark county, Indiana, engaged in 
the active practice of law. In Clark county was 
located the Virginia grant to Clark's soldiers, and 
there he lived until 1818, when he removed to the 
territory of Missouri. Why he removed from In- 
diana is not now definitely known, but in a sketch 
of his life published in the Jackson Eagle after his 
death it is said that he removed to Missouri be- 
cause he became involved in a duel at Charlestown. 
At that time a duel was the ordinary method by 
which questions of honor were settled among gen- 
tlemen. Nor is it to be supposed that a man reared 
among Revolutionary soldiers and breathing from 
infancy the atmosphere of exalted manhood and in- 
dependence would fail to challenge or decline a 
challenge when his personal honor was involved. 
It was the practice of the times, the accepted 
method of settling personal controversy. It was a 
time when he who made a charge in any way re- 
flecting upon the character of another could be 



Alexander Buckner 25 

asked to stand before the party aggrieved to vindi- 
cate his assertions with his blood, or stand branded 
forever as a coward and slanderer. Then it was no 
small matter to assail the character of any man by 
false or dishonorable assertions. 

When Senator: Buckner settled in what is now 
Indiana, in 1812, the state had not been admitted 
to the Union. That great commonwealth, with a 
population now of over two millions, at that time 
only had a population of a little more than twenty- 
four thousand, and that population was dispersed 
along the Ohio and Wabash rivers. The central 
and northern section of the state was a wilderness, 
with here and there a log cabin scattered in the 
vast forests. Among these Indiana pioneers Alex- 
ander Buckner acted certainly no inconsiderable 
part. But all those matters which may have 
seemed to him most important when living, and by 
which, perhaps, he hoped to be remembered, seem 
utterly to have faded from the recollection of men. 
The fact that he was once a resident of Indiana, a 
pioneer of that great state, even would have van- 
ished in oblivion but for the circumstances that he 
took a prominent and leading part in organizing 



26 Alexander Buckner 

the Grand Lodge of Masons of Indiana. Where he 
was made a Mason is not now known. But he be- 
came a member of the Blazing Star Lodge of 
Charlestown. And how well that Lodge was 
named! Those pioneer craftsmen of the Blazing 
Star Lodge of Charlestown, I think, in the dim 
future fancied they could foresee the great destiny 
of Masonry in the new land, and, raising aloft 
their standard, it seemed to them they saw a 
"blazing star" in the wilderness. Nor were they 
deceived. Like a "blazing star" the imperial 
commonwealth of Indiana sparkles in the glorious 
national galaxy. 

As the representative of this lodge at Corydon, 
Alexander Buckner, in 1817, wrote the report and 
suggested the first steps to be taken to organize 
the Grand Lodge of the State of Indiana. In Jan- 
uary, 1818, he was elected first Grand Master of 
Indiana, but in that year he also removed to Mis- 
souri Territory, and in September, 1818, his suc- 
cessor was elected. That he was active in high 
Masonic affairs this record shows. And the Grand 
Lodge of Indiana has not allowed his name to per- 
ish, nor his grave to lie forgotten in obscurity and 



Alexander Buckner 27 

neglect. All honor to them for their loyalty to the 
early fathers of the craft, for their filial devotion, 
their homage to the men of the past who labored 
so well and builded so wisely. But not only have 
the loyal and devoted Masons of Indiana preserved 
well the work of this pioneer of the craft in that 
state; they have also preserved for us in Missouri 
a thread showing an early and intimate connection 
between the earliest Missouri Masons and the craft 
in Indiana. After Past Grand Master Buckner left 
Indiana, his interests in Masonry did not cease. 
Mainly through his efforts, it is to be supposed by 
special dispensation from the Grand Lodge of Indi- 
ana, privileges were granted to establish Unity 
Lodge at Jackson. And Buckner was its first 
master. This Unity Lodge was no doubt one of the 
first, if not the first, lodge of Masons organized in 
Missouri, but all its records have been lost. The 
Grand Lodge of Indiana has made diligent search 
for these important documents, but in vain. How 
interesting it would be to have now a list of those 
pioneer hierarchs of Masonry in Missouri. But 
their names have been swallowed by oblivion. 
When Alexander Buckner moved to Missouri 



28 Alexander Buckner 

territory he was accompanied by his father and 
five sisters. The family was wealthy for those 
days, and owned a number of servants. One of his 
sisters married James Evans, then a leading attor- 
ney of Southern Missouri, residing at Jackson. The 
public and political career of Buckner in Missouri 
was conspicuous from the beginning. Scarcely had 
he settled in this state when he was appointed to 
the office of circuit attorney. Within fourteen 
months after his arrival he was elected one of the 
five representatives of Cape Girardeau county to the 
Constitutional convention to frame the first organic 
law of the state. His brother-in-law, Evans, was 
also elected a member, and Colonel Abraham Byrd, 
Judge Thomas and Joseph McFerron being the 
other members from our county. These were all 
old and prominent citizens. Colonel Byrd had set- 
tled in the county during the Spanish dominion. 
Judge Thomas had been judge of the Territorial 
courts for a number of years, and McFerron was 
long clerk of the court. So the fact that he was 
elected as a member of the Constitutional conven- 
tion, although just settled in the territory, must 
be taken as evidence that he was a man of solid if 



Alexander Biickner 29 

not pre-eminent ability, popular in manners, and 
convincing, if not eloquent, as a public speaker. 
In those early days a great deal depended upon 
ability to ably present public questions in a public 
speech. Public matters were publicly discussed. 
The era of the newspaper press, partisan or inde- 
pendent, subsidized or corrupt, had not dawned in 
this country. It is certain that Senator Buckner 
must in no common degree have possessed the 
power to influence the popular mind in order to be 
elected, under the circumstances, to represent the 
county in the Constitutional convention. For the 
early settlers in this county were equal in intelli- 
gence to any that ever settled in a new country. 
They were liberty-loving men and men of sturdy 
independence. Many had participated in the Rev- 
olutionary war or were descendants of the soldiers 
of that war. They were a homogeneous people, 
Americans by birth, and had braved the terrors of 
the wilderness in order to settle in this trans- 
Mississippi territory. 

In the struggles of the Constitutional conven- 
tion Buckner must have acceptably represented the 
people of this county, for, after the organization of 



30 Alexander Buckner 

the state government, he was elected a member of 
the state Senate. In 1830 he was elected a mem- 
ber of Congress, and while a member of Congress 
was elected to the Senate of the United States as 
the successor of Barton, and thus became the third 
Senator of Missouri. 

Senator Buckner, after he came to this county, 
married Mrs. Weems, a member of the Horrell 
family, originally from Maryland, and this mar- 
riage allied him with one of the oldest and most 
respected families of our county. 

But just arrived at the threshold of a great ca- 
reer, and ready to take part in the great political 
struggles of the times, he fell a victim of epidemic 
cholera, prevailing extensively in 1833 in this 
country. He died on the 6th day of June, 1833, on 
his farm about five miles south of Jackson. His 
wife died within a few hours after him, and both 
were buried on the farm in the same grave, leav- 
ing no descendants. There, over sixty-four years, 
he has rested undisturbed by the great changes 
that have taken place, all unconscious of the sad 
neglect of his grave, and all ^unconcerned that the 



Alexander Buckner 31 

very recollection of his name has faded away in the 
scenes of his former activity. 

Senator Buckner, it is said by those who remem- 
ber him personally, was of medium height and 
well proportioned. His bearing was dignified, some 
even say proud. He was genial in his manners, 
affable and courteous, and as a public speaker per- 
suasive, if not eloquent. He was a man of unblem- 
ished character and reputation. He was industri- 
ous, and it is evident from the papers of his estate 
that he was methodical in his habits and careful in 
his contracts, and punctual in all his engagements. 
He was affectionate in his disposition, liberal and 
charitable, as is evidenced by the bequest of $1,000 
he makes in his will for the education of a little 
nephew by marriage to whom he seems to have 
been much attached. He was a man of literary 
tastes, a lawyer of ability. His law library, for 
those times considerable, ^he willed to his friend, 
Greer W. Davis, who a few years ago left us for 
his long home. 

At the time of his death Senator Buckner was 
rapidly growing in popular esteem in this State. 
His public career was unbroken by defeat. This 



32 Alexander Buckner 

fact in itself is remarkable, evidencing, as it 
does, his wisdom, sagacity, moderation and pro- 
found knowledge of popular wants. It is easy for 
those who suffer defeat to attribute it to popular 
ignorance or prejudice, and to attribute the success 
of rivals to blind fortune. But success usually is 
the result of profound study, indefatigable work 
and merit, while failure and defeat is the result of 
superficial study, ill-directed work and real defects 
of character. No rule is without exceptions, and 
no doubt many have failed who deserved success; 
but the rule applies generally to a public career as 
well as business enterprise. 

Take, then, all the little we know and that has 
come down to us of the active life of Alexander 
Buckner, and we must say that he was a pioneer of 
whom we have just reason to be proud, and that 
it is fit that we should pay him honor today; that 
in honoring him the Grand Lodge of Indiana has 
honored itself and put to shame us,— in whose 
midst his bones have rested so long unnoticed, un- 
marked and unhonored. 

The culture, refinement, and, in fact, the civil- 
ization of a people can be measured by the respect 



Alexander Buckner 33 

paid its honored and distinguished dead. From 
a people taking no interest in the history of its 
past, taking no interest in the struggles that led to 
the establishment of its existence, drawing no in- 
spiration from the lives and examples of its emi- 
nent men of an earlier time, little can be expected. 
Such a people and such men, sunk in a gross mate- 
rialism, and living only to make gains, oblivion has 
already marked for its own. 

And now, here in this old graveyard, where 
sleep so many of the pioneers of this section of our 
great state, the Grand Lodge of Indiana rears this 
monument over the ashes of its earliest Grand 
Master. May this memorial stone stand as an en- 
during testimonial of filial affection as long as this 
river at your feet flows to the all-embracing and 
boundless rolling sea. 




i%. 




WILLIAM CATON RANNEY 



William Gaton Ranney 

First Judge of the Gape Girardeau Gourt 
of Gommon Pleas* 

ON Monday, February 28th, 1898, Hon. William 
Caton Ranney, aged 83 years and 8 days, died 
at his residence, "Spring Farm," in this county. 

At the time of his death Judge Ranney was one 
of our oldest citizens. Born in New York in 1815, 
he came to our county with his parents in 1825, so 
that at the time of his death he had been a resident 
here for fully seventy-three years. 

Judge Ranney was of New England ancestry— 
a descendant of the Pilgrim fathers, not generally, 
but by direct descent. He was a son of Col. 
Stephen Ranney, a soldier of the Revolutionary 
war of the Connecticut line, who served under 
Washington in the New Jersey campaign. In the 
war of 1812 his father was Lieutenant Colonel of 
the First U. S. Infantry. His mother was from 

*Tbis memorial of Judtre Ranney was first published shortly after his 
death in the daily Cape Girardeau Democrat. 



36 William Caton Ranney 

Massachusetts, her name, Elizabeth Hathome, a 
relative of Nathaniel Hathorne. 

Judge Ranney was educated in the pioneer 
schools of our county and at St. Marys' Seminary, 
also known as the "Barrens," near Perry ville. 
When a youth he was employed in the office of Cir- 
cuit Clerk Henry San ford, at Jackson, and after he 
returned from school acted as deputy clerk. In 
1838 he was admitted to the bar. For a short time 
he was engaged in mercantile pursuits at Bloom- 
field. After Stoddard county was organized he was 
one of the commissioners to lay out the county 
seat, Bloomfield. When the Cape Girardeau Court 
of Common Pleas was established in 1852 he was 
appointed first judge of the court, and to this posi- 
tion he was re-elected from time to time until the 
year 1861. In 1871 he was elected a member of the 
State Senate and afterwards a member of the 
House of Representatives. 

In everything tending to improve and promote 
the welfare of this county, Judge Ranney took a 
deep interest and prominent part. He was an 
original advocate of the system of gravel roads, 
that so favorably distinguishes our county, and 



William Caton Ranney §f 

which have done so much for its development. 
He was one of the first stockholders and promoters 
of the Jackson gravel road, the Bloomfield gravel 
road and the Scott county gravel road. For many 
years he took an active interest in the management 
of the last two roads especially. In 1858 he favored 
the construction of a railroad from St. Louis via 
Pilot Knob to Cape Girardeau and thence to Bel- 
mont and aided in securing the incorporation of 
such a company and for a time also acted as presi- 
dent of the company. He was one of the original 
incorporators of the Southeast District Agricul- 
tural Society, and after the war actively assisted 
in its re-organization and for several years was 
president of the society. 

Politically, Judge Ranney originally belonged to 
the Whig party. When the Union was threatened 
in 1861 he was a Union man; he voted against and 
opposed secession. But when the storm of war 
burst over the land, and northern armies came into 
Missouri, all slaveholders, irrespective of their po- 
Htical opinions, were indiscriminately, directly and 
indirectly, deprived of their slaves and property by 
patriots who had nothing to lose by emancipation. 



38 William Caton Ranney 

In 1865 Judge Ranney, together with many others 
who had never engaged in the war or active hostil- 
ities against the United States was disfranchised 
by the Drake constitution. 

For nearly fifty years Judge Ranney lived on his 
farm, five miles south of Cape Girardeau, and on 
the farm where he died. It can be truly said that 
he died a farmer. 

In 1844 Judge Ranney married Elizabeth Gibo- 
ney, second daughter of Mr. Robert Giboney, one 
of the earliest settlers of this country and when it 
was a part of the Dominion of Spain. 

These in short are the leading events in the life- 
history of Judge William C. Ranney. Such events 
are not difficult to narrate. 

In his personality Judge Ranney was distin- 
guished. He was over six feet high and quite 
corpulent for many years before his death. He 
was dignified and erect in bearing. His head was 
large and well shaped, his eyes were steel gray and 
penetrating, his complexion fair, his voice, when 
among friends, cheerful, clear and musical, but 
when unjustly assailed, and he was hardly ever 
justly assailed, harsh and defiant. 

But to sketch those subtle characteristics that 



William Caton Ranney 39 

so long made the name of Judge Ranney in this 
county a synonym for courage, honesty, integrity, 
fair dealing and public spirit is no easy task. 

In his manner he was plain and unassuming, 
and without ostentation. He was self-respecting 
without being proud. He was open and candid in 
his intercourse with others, always frankly and 
sometimes bluntly, expressed his opinion. He was 
incapable of double dealing, saying one thing and 
meaning another, promising one thing and doing 
another. Honor and integrity were his natural in- 
heritance, and as inseparable from him as the air 
he breathed. Unconsciously and naturally he re- 
pelled the attempts of those that aimed, even un- 
wittingly, to tarnish the bright escutcheon of his 
integrity. Thus when a member of the State sen- 
ate, before the enactment of the constitutional and 
legislative provision against the acceptance of rail- 
road passes by a public officer, he returned the 
passes transmitted to him with the remark, that 
the state paid his traveling expenses, as a senator, 
from and to the state capitol. He hated wrong and 
oppression, and was always ready to stand in the 
breach for the rights of the people. Thus he re- 



40 William Caton Ranney 

sisted the iniquitous railroad debt and tax that had 
been fastened upon the people of this township 
when most of the principal taxpayers were dis- 
franchised and spent his time and money in an 
endeavor to relieve the property of the township 
from this heavy burden, although villified by many 
for his course in the matter. But threats, abuse 
and vilification could not swerve him from what 
he considered right and just. He was a man of un- 
doubted courage. During the war, when predatory 
soldiers too often made the lives and homes of the 
citizens in a border state unsafe, while not seeking 
trouble and always prudent, he never on all proper 
occasions, failed to protect home and fireside. Thus 
on one occasion, when some of these irresponsible 
scouts proposed to search his home for suspected 
Confederates, he told them that no Confederates 
were on his premises, that his niece was upstairs 
sick, and that they might look around the place be- 
low, but could not go upstairs, and he planted him- 
self at the head of the stairs, and so firm and un- 
daunted was his appearance and conduct that the 
lawless band desisted and went away. One of his 
most marked characteristics was his firm and un- 



William Caton Ranney 41 

yielding determination. When he had once made 
up his mind he rarely ever deviated from a course 
marked out. Thus when, in 1838, on business for 
Stoddard county, just then organized, he was on his 
way to Jefferson City on horseback, he found on 
his route a river swollen by a freshet and no ferry. 
He did not stop, but plunged in with his horse to 
swim the river. In crossing a river in this manner 
on horseback it is dangerous to pull the bridle, so 
he threw it over the neck of the horse and let him 
go. About half way across the stream, the horse 
turned and swam back. But he started him in 
again, and when the horse was about the middle of 
the stream he turned again and swam back. So the 
third time. Undaunted he went into the river a 
fourth time and when near the center of the stream 
pushed the horse's head in the water, and this so 
confused the animal as to the direction he was mov- 
ing, that he carried him across. It was on this 
trip, he often related, that he rode into St. Louis 
up to the old Planters' House and tieing his horse 
to the posts in front of the hotel, entered, and that 
the landlord afterwards came out and took charge 
of the horse, taking it to the stable which was then 



42 William Caton Ranney 

run in connection with the house. How the world 
has changed since then! In his intercourse with 
his neighbors Judge Ranney was ever ready to ex- 
tend them a helping hand. He always exercised 
those neighborly offices and amenities, distinguish- 
ing the highest class of American farmers and 
planters. When the first German settlers came to 
this county they found in Judge Ranney a warm 
and disinterested friend. That they appreciated 
his friendship and knew his worth is shown by the 
fact that when his slaves had been set free and en- 
ticed away from his farm, although he was willing 
to pay them for their work, and his corn stood un- 
gathered in the field, his old German neighbors, 
George Siemers and George Keller, deceased, un- 
asked and unrequested, came with their teams and 
gathered his crop for him. He never forgot this 
act of kindness. Nor was Judge Ranney unwilling 
to work or too proud to follow the plow. After he 
lost his servants he personally went into the field 
and did manual labor, although unaccustomed to 
such work and although his corpulency made it 
hard for him. He was industrious and frugal, no 
spendthrift, but liberal. No stranger went away 



William Caton Ranney 43 

from his door denied shelter or hospitality. He 
was kind, genial and amiable in disposition and soft 
as summer to those that he loved. With pride 
shortly before his death he referred to the fact that 
during a married life of over fifty years, he had 
never exchanged a harsh or unkind word with the 
cherished and loved companion of his youth and old 
age. He could not tolerate shams and frauds or 
dishonesty, and never failed, at the proper times, 
to express his opinion as to any dishonesty or dis- 
honest action that came under his observation. He 
was not a fluent talker, or loquacious, or voluble, 
or of nimble speech, but rather sententious and 
brief, however, when occasion required it, pointed, 
sarcastic and fearless in telling the truth. He was 
free from jealousy, free from envy, free from that 
grasping disposition that appropriates the world in 
anticipation. He was not free from prejudice, 
deep-seated and firm, when once prejudice found 
lodgment in his mind. But he was slow to take 
offense, and ready to forgive when he saw that no 
offense was intended. He was a firm and loyal 
friend. He always took a deep interest in public 
and political affairs, and although ready to serve. 



44 William Caton Ranney 

never asked for or schemed to secure office and po- 
sition. His leisure was ever occupied in reading, 
and he was a deep student of poHtics. He loved 
agriculture. He was active on the farm and in his 
garden and around his home as long as fragile na- 
ture allowed him to be active. During his last and 
long illness he was cheerful and resigned. In all 
the relations of life, as a husband, father, friend, 
citizen and public servant, he was an exemplar. 

But, says Thomas a Kempis, * 'death cometh to 
all, and the life of man swiftly passeth away like 
a shadow." 




MRS. ^MATILDA RODNEY BLOCK 



Mrs. Matilda Rodney Block 

A Sketch of Her Time and Family* 

T^HE death of Mrs. Matilda Rodney Block, which 
-'' occurred January 22, 1902, at the advanced 
age of 86 years and 6 months, severs another link 
which connects the present generation with the 
early pioneers of our county and Southeast Mis- 
souri, and all remembrance of which, with ever in- 
creasing rapidity, is now fading into tradition, be- 
cause little attention has been given— to our shame 
be it said— to the authentic preservation of their 
work, their labors, their hardships, their trials and 
even their mere names. 

From the 22d day of July, 1815, the day when 
Mrs. Block was born in Cape Girardeau county, in 
the then Territory of Missouri, to the date of her 
death, when measured by the ordinary length of 
human life alone, seems a long span of time, but 
when we also take into account all the events that 



*This memorial sketch was printed in the Cape Girardeau Democrat 
February, 1902. 



46 Mrs. Matilda Rodney Block 

have happened during that period— all the changes 
that have transpired, that the face of the country 
in which we now dwell has been transformed and 
the very globe has, in a measure, been shorn and 
despoiled of the immensity it seemed to possess at 
her birth, it is hard to realize that in the course of 
a single life all this has come to pass. Certain it 
is that locally the whole social fabric has been 
refashioned. Other people now occupy the land. 
The wood-crowned hills of the county, where the 
axe of the early American settlers first echoed 
through the lordly forest, and where they reared 
their log houses, established civilized and ordered 
society, have generally passed out of the hands of 
the original occupants and their descendants, and 
wide extending fields are now held by new Ameri- 
cans hailing from the banks of the Rhine or Dan- 
ube, and their children. But when one, who in her 
youth saw the smoke curl up over the woods from 
the chimney-tops of the homes of these early pio- 
neers, who was of them, belonged to them, of 
heroic lineage, and was so well and long known 
among us for her noble virtues, goes to her long 
rest, it does not seem inappropriate at least cur- 



Mrs. Matilda Rodney Block 47 

sorily to refer to her descent and to the days long 
ago when she was young and her people first came 
to the "shores of Latium." 

Mrs. Block was a great grand-daughter of Col. 
Anthony Bledsoe of Greenfield or Bledsoe's Lick, 
in what was afterwards known as Sumner county, 
Middle Tennessee. Her great grand-uncle was Col. 
Isaac Bledsoe, named "Tullituskee" (waving corn 
blade) by the Indians. Both were killed by Indians 
in 1786-7. Both were distinguished leaders of the 
people, and many of their descendants have since 
achieved renown in peace and war. Her grand- 
father was William Archibald Penney, a native of 
Wales, a gunsmith by trade, a profession of un- 
usual importance to the early pioneers. He came 
from South Carolina to Middle Tennessee in about 
1774, where he married Susan Bledsoe, daughter of 
Col. Anthony Bledsoe, and grandmother of Mrs. 
Block. In 1808 Penney moved from Tennessee to 
the Territory of Missouri. His family then con- 
sisted of his wife and six children— three sons and 
three daughters, and a number of slaves. The 
journey was performed on a keel boat with a num- 
ber of other families, down the Cumberland and up 



48 Mrs. Matilda Rodney Block 

the Mississippi rivers. After an uneventful voyage 
the boat landed at the "Red House" at Cape Girar- 
deau. The "Red House" was the residence of Don 
Louis Lorimier, Commandant of the Post of Cape 
Girardeau during the Spanish dominion, and who 
died shortly after the arrival of Penney. This 
"Red House" stood on the lot now occupied by 
the Catholic Parochial school. 

The Penney family first resided on what was 
long known as the Rodney place on Cape LaCruz, 
but after a short time removed to a farm about 
three miles south of where the city of Jackson is 
now located, and near the farm at present occupied 
by Judge Joseph Medley. Here Mrs. Block's grand- 
father and grandmother resided until 1832, when 
her grandmother died. Her grandfather then took 
up his residence with his oldest son, Anthony 
Bledsoe, where he died in 1842. The other sons of 
the family, who came with him from Tennessee, 
were respectively named Isaac Bledsoe and Thomas 
Bledsoe Penney, and a son born in Cape Girardeau 
county in 1810 was named William Archibald, and 
well known not only in our county, but also to 
many people of Southeast Missouri. Of the three 



Mrs. Matilda Rodney Block 49 

daughters Mary (Polly) was the oldest, and her 
two sisters were named Matilda 'and Peggy. Ma- 
tilda married Michael Rodney, and Peggy married 
Louis Lorimier, Jr. , son of Don Louis Lorimier, He 
was graduated at West Point in 1806, commis- 
sioned in the army, but after serving for some 
time resigned to devote himself to farming. He 
was appointed by President Madison Indian Agent 
for the Shawnee and Delaware Indians, then resid- 
ing in what is now known as Stoddard and Dunklin 
counties, and acted as such agent until their re- 
moval. While there his wife's youngest brother, 
William Archibald Penney, spent much time with 
the Indians, and according to his statement the 
principal chief of the Shawnee and Delaware In- 
dians, then living where the town of Bloomfield is 
now located, was named Wappapillatee. It should 
be remarked that Mr. Penney seriously objected to 
the attentions his daughter Peggy received from 
young Lorimier, and on one occasion when he saw 
him coming to the house, he became furious and 

snatched down his rifle, saying: "G d d n 

his Indian soul, I'll shoot him," from which it 
would appear that he was not only prejudiced 



50 Mrs. Matilda Rodney Block 

against the Indians and the mother of Lorimier, 
who was a half Delaware, but also inclined to pro- 
fanity. His wife, however, frustrated his hostile 
design, and shortly afterwards young Lorimier 
eloped with Peggy. He died on his farm just west 
of town now in part occupied by the Lorimier cem- 
etery. His widow after his death married Edward 
Walker and died many years after him. 

The oldest daughter, Mary or Polly, married 
Thomas S. Rodney, a widower, whose first wife 
was Marie Louise Lorimier, and sister of the hus- 
band of her sister Peggy. Mrs. Block was their 
daughter. Thomas Rodney was a prominent early 
citizen. In 1805 he was sheriff and collector of the 
Cape Girardeau District, then embracing all the 
country south of Apple Creek, extending to the 
Arkansas and White Rivers and indefinitely west. 
I have before me now a tax receipt dated Septem- 
ber 14, 1805, for $1.95 given to Mrs. Rebecca Gib- 
oney, written on a small piece of paper (about three 
inches long and one and one-half inch wide), 
yellow with age, signed by him as sheriff, from 
which it is apparent that he was a man of scholarly 
attainments. The Rodneys, too, were among the 



Mrs. Matilda Rodney Block 51 

early pioneers of the country, and settled here dur- 
ing the Spanish government. Thomas S. Rodney 
afterwards removed to Pitman's Ferry and there 
died. Pitman's Ferry in those early days was the 
gateway into the Arkansas Territory. The route 
of travel from the Southeast did not then go 
straight across the country from Memphis and 
other points due west. A road had not even been 
cut across the St. Francis bottoms, but was after- 
wards cut out and bridged under contract with the 
United States, or Territorial Government of Arkan- 
sas, by Col. William Neely, who also had married a 
daughter of Col. Anthony Bledsoe and a sister of 
the grandmother of Mrs. Block. Col. Neely for a 
time resided in Cape Girardeau county, represent- 
ing the Cape Girardeau District in the early Terri- 
torial Assemblies, but afterwards removed to the 
Arkansas Territory. The early route of travel 
from the Southeast, from Tennessee, North Caro- 
lina and Kentucky was across the Ohio river at 
Golconda, across the Mississippi at Green's Ferry, 
thence to Jackson, (hence the name of Old Jack- 
son by which our county town is known as far as 
Texas) thence across the St. Francois at Greenville 



52 Mrs. Matilda Rodney Block 

and across the Black, and thence to Pitman's Ferry 
across the Current to Batesville. After her fa- 
ther's death, which occurred at Pitman's Ferry, 
the family returned to Cape Girardeau county. 

In 1831 Mrs. Block was married to John Renf ro, 
but within six months after her marriage her hus- 
band was mysteriously killed, and thus tragically 
ended her early dreams. In 1832 she married Zalma 
Block, and after fifty years of married life, in 1882, 
they celebrated their golden wedding. Four years 
thereafter, in 1886, Mr. Block died, and now she 
has followed him. 

Perhaps no woman was better known to the 
older generation in Southeast Missouri and on Crow- 
ley's Ridge and in Northeast Arkansas than Mrs. 
Block. For many years she and her husband were 
engaged in what is now called the hotel business 
in Cape Girardeau. This was before the era of 
railroads. Cape Girardeau in those days was the 
natural starting point for all travelers intending to 
visit the interior of Southeast Missouri and the 
northern section of Crowley's Ridge, and to Cape 
Girardeau the stream of travel from the interior 
districts came in order to go north and south on the 



Mrs. Matilda Rodney Block 53 

river, and the old St. Charles hotel was for many 
years the principal hotel in Cape Girardeau, and 
here in the course of years innumerable people 
experienced a hospitable welcome. Mrs. Block, by 
her genial disposition, kindness of heart and those 
attentions to the wants of her guests, which never 
fail to win the respect of the sensible traveler, 
secured a large circle of admiring friends. All 
who came within the sphere of her influence were 
charmed by her many womanly virtues and graces. 
Her charity was extended to the unfortunate and 
afflicted, to the poor and the needy, white and 
black, as unostentatiously as liberal. Nor were the 
unfortunate of her own family made unwelcome at 
her table or home. No one went away hungry 
from her door. Her house and home were the 
center of social life, and young people were always 
welcome, and always found in her a ready assist- 
ant to aid their pleasure and enjoyment. In her 
family and among her friends, by her sweetness 
of temper, her calm speech, her dignity, almost 
austere bearing, her great common sense, her char- 
ity, her kindness of heart, her generosity, she thus 
reigned as queen by right divine. 




WILLIAM BALLENTINE 



William Ballentine 

Blacksmith, Argonaut, Lawyer, Judge and 
Farmer 

Y17ILLIAM BALLENTINE was a native of Dum- 
' • frieshire, Scotland, and born in August, 
1826. Dumfrieshire is one of the Scottish border 
counties. Here the Solway breaks deep into the 
land and makes the southern border of the shire 
for almost twenty miles, while on the north it is 
cinctured by a lofty mountain range. The high 
table lands from the mountains all slope to the Sol- 
way, and through these break the Nith, the Annan 
and the Esk in their course to the foaming, spark- 
ling and enchanting firth, long famous as a resort 
of the favorites of fortune and royalty. While still 
a child of tender years — in fact so young that he 
did not learn from his mother, and never knew the 
date of his birth— the boy became an orphan, and 
hence was reared by his grandfather until he was 
ten years of age. Then he drifted to the sheep 



56 William Ballentine 

farms of the broken and barren plateaus of his 
native shire, where the Whitecomb, the Hart Fell, 
the Queensberry and Ettrick Pen stand sentinel 
and cast their shadows far over the land and firth. 
Here the grandeur of surrounding nature forever 
impressed the youthful mind with that love for the 
ideal and poetic, which was a marked character- 
istic of the man. 

At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to a 
blacksmith, and it can be truthfully said that he 
became a master workman in that ancient and hon- 
orable craft. But the narrow sphere and possibili- 
ties for advancement in his native land did not 
satisfy him. So in 1847 he sailed for the United 
States, having by his own unaided exertions during 
several years saved enough money to pay his pass- 
age. After working in several states, in 1850 he 
crossed the plains— an argonaut to the golden 
shores of California. Like many others he suffered 
loss, privation and danger, but finally reached the 
famed Eldorado of the West. In the following 
year, however, he returned to the States via Pan- 
ama, and in the fall of 1851 located in Commerce, 



William Ballentine §7 

where ever since he has lived and died. At firet 
he followed his trade and long he was known as 
the best blacksmith in Scott county. 

He first made and introduced plows with an iron 
mold-board in the county. In 1860 he was ap- 
pointed County Clerk of Scott county by Governor 
Gamble. While county clerk he read law, and in 
1866 was appointed by Governor Fletcher Judge of 
the Court of Common Pleas of Scott county, and 
held the position until the court was abolished. He 
was elected Public Administrator, also appointed 
postmaster at Commerce, and he acceptably dis- 
charged the duties of that office. For a time he 
published a newspaper in Commerce in company 
with the late Dr. Lynch— the Commerce Dispatch. 
He greatly loved agriculture, and early in 1870 
began to clear a farm near Commerce on which 
was then deemed an almost worthless tract of so- 
called swamp land, and there he first practically 
demonstrated the value of drainage and inaugu- 
rated that system which has now virtually re- 
claimed all the lands of Scott county subject to 
overflow from surface water. He was married 
twice, but no children survive him, and now his 



58 William Ballentine 

second wife, Mrs. Emily Brock Sewell, and many 
friends mourn his loss. 

Judge Ballentine was, in the true sense of the 
word, a self-made man. Born in abject poverty, 
left an orphan at an age when he was hardly able 
to realize his loss, drifting around on the sheep 
farms in the mountains of his native shire, in some 
unaccountable way he acquired the merest rudi- 
ments of learning, then was apprenticed to a black- 
smith, became a master workman, saved enough 
money to leave his native heath and make his way 
across the sea to find a home and an honored posi- 
tion in a more favored land. Here, too, he soon 
joined that band of gallant spirits that made a 
pathway across the continent to the Pacific. He 
was a man of genial and kindly disposition, of 
simple tastes, fond of children, devoted to his fam- 
ily, 'ready to serve his friends, had few enemies, 
and of these he never said an unkind word. He 
never mentioned the wrongs done him, nor the 
kind service— and these were many— that he ren- 
dered to others. 

In all affairs touching the growth and prosperity 
of his county and state, he took a deep interest, for 



William Ballentine 59 

he had great public spirit. He was a man of integ- 
rity and unflinching moral and physical courage, 
but prudent and circumspect in his conduct. He 
was ever ready to aid and assist the unfortunate to 
the extent of his ability. Although for many years 
a free thinker, he practiced all the highest moral 
precepts of divine religion, and finally united with 
the Methodist Episcopal church, South. When he 
came to Missouri he was an ardent Benton Demo- 
crat, but in 1860 he cast the only Republican vote 
in Scott county for Abraham Lincoln as President. 
As a member of the Chicago Republican conven- 
tion he voted to renominate President Grant for a 
third term until his wing of the party went down 
in defeat. Since 1896 he affiliated with the Demo- 
cratic party and he voted for William J. Bryan, and 
also in 1900. 

He was not without faults and far from being 
perfect, but he was a good and honest man and an 
upright citizen, and will long be missed by those 
who knew him best. He died at his home in Com- 
merce March 12th, 1902, aged, as near as can be 
stated, 76 years and 6 months. One of his last acts 
was to give the people of Commerce four acres of 



60 William Ballentivs 

land for a graveyard on the Commerce and Benton 
road— a beautiful spot of ground overlooking the 
wide-expanding fields, ever growing wider, of the 
Tywappity bottom, and there he now lies buried, 
"sleeps the sleep that knows no waking." Sit tibi 
terra levis. 




ROBERT STURDIVANT 



Robert Sturdivant 

First Banker of Southeast Missouri* 

ROBERT STURDIVANT died at Tallipoosa, Ga., 
on the 12th of October, 1906. Born March 31, 
1817, in Lunenburg county, Virginia, at the time of 
his death he was a Httle over 88 years of age. In 
1835, as a youth of scarcely 17 years of age, he 
came from Virginia to Cape Girardeau. It is hard 
for us now to reaHze that he came across the coun- 
try on horseback to this then very little village from 
his Virginia home. It surprises many now to learn 
that when he came it was not unusual for those 
seeking a new home, or visiting friends in the 
Mississippi valley, to travel a distance of 700 or 800 
miles on horseback. But when we reflect a little 
more, allow the mind to travel back seventy years 
into the past, we are overwhelmed by the thoughts 
of the tremendous revolution that has taken place 
in our social and political affairs, in the ideals and 

•This sketch was first published in the Jackson Cash Book shortly after 
the death of Mr. Sturdivant. 



62 Robert Sturdivant 

character of the people here then— and here now. 
Robert Sturdivant was a direct descendant of that 
heroic race that achieved the independence of 
our country. He came from that noble common- 
wealth which it was then not fashionable for small 
minds to attempt to belittle or ridicule, that gave 
us Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry and a 
grand galaxy of able men, a commonwealth that 
with an unselfish patriotism sacrificed much for the 
common cause. In his youth a vast flood of foreign 
immigrants had not as yet submerged the ideals of 
the early Americans— the Americans of the Revo- 
lution. It is not far from Lunenburg to the sea, 
not far to Yorktown where the Revolutionary War 
was brought to a successful conclusion by the 
capitulation of the British forces. Although he 
referred to it rarely, he was proud of the fact, as 
well he might be, that his father knew, and was a 
personal friend of Washington, and that he had 
served under him. The great struggle for Inde- 
pendence when he was a boy was still a living 
theme. Many of the conspicuous actors of Virginia 
in that great drama were still among the living. 
As a boy he no doubt saw many of these in Eastern 



Robert Sturdivant 63 

Virginia, and many of the aged soldiers of that 
great war for liberty and not for conquest and 
dominion. From his earliest boyhood he imbibed 
the true doctrine of American institutions without 
the least intermixture of foreign theories. What 
wonder he never sympathized with the new ideals 
of our day. Amid such surroundings Robert Sturdi- 
vant received his early education; not in a free 
common school — free common schools were at that 
time unknown. It was then supposed that an edu- 
cation, like every other good thing of value, ought 
to be secured by labor, by arduous effort and self- 
denial. At that time the very idea af their children 
being educated for nothing was revolting to the 
pride of the people. Paupers then only received 
the rudiments of education free or as a charity. 
Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that at that 
time the country was without schools, and good 
schools. In such a local school or academy Robert 
Sturdivant was educated, and by assiduous study 
acquired the foundation of a classical education and 
upon that foundation he built during the balance 
of his life. He was always a student. 

But, as stated, he came to Cape Girardeau in 1835, 



B4: Robert Sturdivant 

thus educated and equipped intellectually. His 
brother-in-law, Edwin White, at that time resided 
here, and perhaps this was the original cause that 
induced him to immigrate to this country. With 
White, soon after his arrival, he embarked in the 
mercantile business. A few years afterwards the 
great panic of that time brought the business to 
an abrupt close, and the firm was forced into bank- 
ruptcy. These were dark days for Robert Sturdi- 
vant. Without money and without friends, over- 
whelmed with debts which he was utterly unable 
to pay, he abandoned the struggle here and went 
to Mississippi, where he taught school for a time 
and worked in some capacity on the Vicksburg & 
Meridian railroad, then in course of construction. 
His mind, however, dwelt in the place where he 
had failed. During this gloomy period of his life 
Andrew Giboney was his friend, assisted him and 
negotiated with his creditors for his relief. Within 
a year he returned, taught school here, and also 
published for a short time a newspaper. Those 
who attended his school, yet living among us, are 
James M. Whitelaw, Esq., and Samuel M. Green. 
In 1843 he entered into partnership with Andrew 



Robert Sturdivant 65 

Giboney in the mercantile business, the firm being 
known as R. Sturdivant & Co. While in partner- 
ship with Mr. Giboney, on at least one occasion, he 
personally took a flat-boat to New Orleans loaded 
with produce. One of the colored men, "Uncle" 
Edmund Smith, now about 84 years of age, a good 
and pious man, of whom his race can well be proud, 
who accompanied him on this trip, attended his 
funeral, deeply affected by the thoughts and recol- 
lections of the past. "Uncle" Edmund has lived 
here now seventy-five years and well recollects the 
time when Robert Sturdivant came here a mere 
youth. 

In 1846 his partnership with Giboney was dis- 
solved, and he entered into the milling business 
with Mr. Ben M. Horrell, operating what was then 
known as the "White Mill," on the river in the 
north part of town. This was the first steam mill 
built in Cape Girardeau and in Southeast Missouri. 
In this business he continued for a few years, and 
then established a commission and wholesale gro- 
cery house at the corner of Water and Themis 
streets. In this business he continued until 1857. 
It was a profitable business, and it is said that his 



66 Robert Sturdivant 

income annually amounted to more than $10, 000 for 
several years, and in that time this was a princely 
income. During this time he visited, in connection 
with his business, all the lower southeastern coun- 
ties, and thus gained an intimate knowledge of 
Southeast Missouri. He knew nearly all the early 
settlers. In the descendants of these early settlers, 
their fortunes and misfortunes, he took a deep 
interest. He remembered the sturdy fathers, clad 
in homespun when he first came, and the country 
was almost a wilderness, and he rejoiced with the 
fortunes of the descendants of some of these, as he 
lamented the decay and misfortune of some others. 
What may seem strange to some is that he never 
forgot his liabilities on account of the bankruptcy 
of the firm of White & Sturdivant; that he did not 
consider, because the law freed him from the liabil- 
ities, that he was therefore also morally exempt, 
although he might well have argued that he was a 
mere boy when he entered into partnership with 
his brother-in-law, that he did not know anything 
about the business, that he left the management of 
the affairs to him, that his brother-in-law was 
extravagant, devoted his time to politics, that he 



Robert Sturdivant 67 

had only a nominal interest in the business, etc. , 
etc. Not so. As soon as he was able to pay he 
hunted up the creditors of the old firm of White & 
Sturdivant, many of whom had almost forgotten 
their claims, and paid them in full with interest. 

In 1857 he was elected cashier of the Cape Gir- 
ardeau Branch Bank of the State of Missouri, and 
during the balance of his actual business life he 
remained in the banking business, a business for 
which he was by nature, disposition and tempera- 
ment well qualified. He was an ideal banker. In 
1867, when the affairs of the old State Bank were 
wound up, and that institution fell into the hands 
of speculators, he purchased the assets of the Cape 
Girardeau branch and continued the business in his 
own name as a private bank until 1882, when he 
organized the corporation known as the Sturdivant 
Bank, and of which he remained the honored presi- 
dent until some five years ago. In 1880, in order 
to close up some financial matters, he was com- 
pelled to acquire the Union Mills, and for several 
years he again looked after the operation of a flour- 
ing mill, a business in which he took a lively in- 
terest. 



68 Robert Sturdivant 

This is a brief epitome of the active business 
life of Robert Sturdivant in Cape Girardeau during 
sixty-five years. It was an active and industrious 
hfe. But this naked sketch of his active Hfe would 
be incomplete without something more, without an 
attempt to give at least a glimpse of his inner life, 
of those subtle characteristics that made him the 
man that will always be held in fond remembrance 
by those who had the pleasure and privilege to 
know him intimately. To say that his honesty in 
all business transactions was unquestioned but 
poorly expresses this trait of his character. Robert 
Sturdivant was honest in the widest and most com- 
prehensive meaning of the word. He was incap- 
able of doing anything that even savored of dis- 
honesty in all the varied phases of human life; and 
it may be doubted whether he ever had a dishonest 
thought. Coupled with this innate honesty was a 
sympathetic heart, a charitable and generous dis- 
position. But this disposition did not lead him to 
throw away his substance on every unworthy 
object. No worthy person or worthy charitable 
cause appealed to him for aid in vain. He was 
public-spirited, but never sought to gain applause 



Robert Sturdivant 69 

by what he did for the advancement of the public 
good; nor did he push himself into public place. He 
was of a retiring disposition— hated ostentation. 
It may be said now that to his financial aid it is 
entirely owing that the city of Cape Girardeau 
secured railroad facilities twenty-five years ago, 
that but for the money he advanced without secur- 
ity to promote that great enterprise so important 
to the people of Cape Girardeau the railroads we 
now have might have remained unbuilt, perhaps, 
two decades longer. He had faith in his fellow 
man. Although for many years the head of a 
financial institution he never lost faith in men. 
He, perhaps, loaned more large sums of money 
according to his means upon mere personal prom- 
ises, without any collateral security whatever, than 
any other banker in the state in his time. But this 
should also be noted, that he only loaned his own 
money in this way, and not the money entrusted 
to his care and belonging to others. All such per- 
sonal loans were strictly the loans of the money of 
Robert Sturdivant. Nor did old age and experi- 
ence lessen his faith in men, although we all know 
that at times his faith was sorely put to the test. 



70 Robert Sturdivant 

This also must be said that he never complained or 
expatiated on losses he sustained. He seemed to 
forget his losses as well as the dishonesty of those 
he had trusted. Nothing would betray his thoughts 
except, perhaps, a peculiar twinkle of his eye. He 
was, however, not an unthinking optimist, nor yet 
a wild and unreasonable pessimist. He lived a 
plain and simple life. He made no display in dress 
or otherwise. Every summer, when in active busi- 
ness, for many years he went away for several 
months to his old home in Virginia to visit his sister, 
and on his return visited his brother in Tennessee, 
who survives him. When his sister died, and her 
family moved to Tallipoosa, he visited there, and, 
as age came upon him, remained with them during 
the last years of his life. But he always consid- 
ered Cape Girardeau his home; and it was his last 
wish that he should be buried here by the side of 
his brother and sister, who have slept in the old 
cemetery for many years. He was possessed of a 
rare, superior and discriminating mind. He had 
high ethical ideals. Although he cultivated the 
suppression of any quick expression of speech, and 
always seemed to hesitate when he spoke, those 



Robert Sturdivant 71 

who observed him closely soon recognized that he 
was quick to form opinions and conclusions, but 
slow, as if to weigh well and consider fully, to give 
utterance to what he thought. He was conserva- 
tive in all his methods. He had a retentive mem- 
ory. While he read much and carefully, he did not 
thus employ all his leisure. At times he would sit 
still an hour or two apparently lost in serene reflec- 
tion, seeming to enjoy the company of his thoughts. 
Every day he gave a part of his time to social inter- 
course; but never indulged in intoxicating drinks, 
nor did he visit bar-rooms or saloons. He was very 
systematic and orderly in his work. He had a 
quick and observant eye, noticed and took care of 
little things, indicating the executive and adminis- 
trative mind. When more steamboats than now 
plied the river, after business hours he invariably 
went to the river front to note the arrival and 
departure of boats. He knew all the river cap- 
tains and boat officers and they all knew him. He 
was a loyal and devoted friend to those he hon- 
ored with his friendship. He was a little below 
medium size; well formed; had small hands and 
feet, a fine and well-shaped head, a nose slightly 



72 Robert Sturdivant 

aquiline, and a dark and piercing eye overhung 
by heavy eyebrows. He walked erect, carried him- 
self with great dignity on all occasions, was genial 
and cordial to those he loved and admired, and 
scrupulously polite to all he met. He never mar- 
ried, but in him his nephews and nieces had a kind 
and loving father. 

Such was Robert Sturdivant, as near as inade- 
quate words can portray him. Now he has paid 
the debt we all must pay. 




AFRS. ZERILDA ItYFtNl-: 



Mrs. Zerilda Byrne* 

Vl 7E neglected to chronicle the death of one of 
' • the oldest and most respected residents of 
our county, Mrs. Zerilda Byrne, on her farm, 
"White Hall," on Tuesday, October 16th, 1888, in 
our last issue. With Mrs. Byrne indeed one of our 
oldest, worthiest and most amiable residents has 
passed from among us to the heavenly realms 
above. 

Mrs. Byrne was born in this county in 1812 on 
a farm situate a little distance above what is now 
the town of Jackson. There her grandfather, 
Col. Christopher Hays, had settled on a grant of a 
thousand acres under direct permit from the Mar- 
quis Caso Calvo, the then Governor-General, in the 



•This sketch was originally published in a Cape Girardeau paper and 
only imperfectly portrays the character of a very intelligent and amiable 
lady of noble lineage. For nearly fifty years see resided on "White Hall" 
farm, adjacent to "El Bosque de los Ulmos" — Elmwood, a Spanish grant 
made to the grandfather of Mrs. Houck in 1797, and her ancestral home. 
When a little girl Mrs. Houck was a frequent visitor at "White Hall" and 
enjoyed the counsel and friendship of Mrs. Byrne, who was childless. 
Before the war, when she had many servants, it was her rule to have relijr- 
ious services with them every evening, and at least one of her former ser- 
vants still living follows her precepts. From early childhood Mrs. Honck 
knew and loved Mrs. Byrne, and no one knew her but to love her. 



74 Mrs. Zerilda Byrne 

year 1800, and there her father, John Hays, resided 
at the time of her birth. Her grandfather came 
with his family from the western part of Pennsyl- 
vania. During the Revolutionary war he was the 
leading man in that section of the colony and 
Colonel in the regular service. After the Revolu- 
tion he came to what is now Missouri as one of the 
"Gentlemen Surveyors" to survey the grant Colonel 
George Morgan thought he received from the Span- 
ish government, and for his services was to receive 
forty square miles of territory to settle and colon- 
ize. After the Louisiana Purchase he was ap- 
pointed the first Presiding Judge of the Court 
of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions of the Dis- 
trict of Cape Girardeau and at that time the Dis- 
trict of Cape Girardeau embraced nearly all of 
South Missouri and a large part of what is now 
tbe state of Arkansas. His son, her father, was 
the first sheriff of the District of Cape Girardeau 
and also, during the administration of John Quincy 
Adams, Receiver of the Land Office, then located 
at Jackson. 

Mrs. Byrne received her earliest education at 
the Mount Tabor school house, the oldest and first 



Mrs. Zerilda Byrne 75 

English school on the west side of the Mississippi 
river, and which was located near the farm on 
which she died. Subsequently she received private 
instruction in the family of John Scripps, an itin- 
erant Methodist preacher, and afterwards one of 
the earliest merchants in Jackson. She also 
attended school in Cape Girardeau in a little log 
school house located where now the St. Charles 
Hotel stands, surrounded by apple trees and known 
as "Cousins' Orchard." 

In 1818 she lived on a farm above what is now 
known as Love joy and she well remembered the 
first steamboat that plowed the mighty waters of 
the great river, because the boat landed at her 
father's plantation to secure some dry rails to make 
steam to overcome the current of the river near 
Grand Tower. Then the whole north part of the 
county was a primeval wilderness. The Shawnee 
Indians, under the chief then known as "Half- 
moon," and the Delawares, under the chief known 
as "Pumpkin," still camped, hunted and cultivated 
little patches of corn in the valleys of the creeks in 
that locality. In 1840 Mrs. Byrne intermarried 
with Judge Peter Byrne, long one of the leading 



76 Mrs. Zerilda Byrne 

and most influential citizens of our county and who 
preceded her in death over twenty years. Since 
her marriage she resided on the farm where she 
died. 

Over fifty years ago Mrs. Byrne became a con- 
vert of the Catholic faith, and her uniform piety, 
sincere devotion, never-failing charity and ever 
amiable and lovely disposition evidenced that the 
tenets of her faith were with her a living reality. 
As she lived, so she died. Her intimate friends, 
who knew her and loved her gentle spirit so well, 
now gone to a better sphere, will long cherish her 
sweet memory. Her neighbors, some of whom at 
least have known and respected her for fifty years, 
in good and evil days, in days of sunshine and the 
lawlessness of civil war, will miss her departure 
with the "endless caravan." But it is a long time 
since the orchard bloomed around the log school 
house and a merry little maid played under the 
blossoming apple trees and we all must go to rest. 



CECdjiaax.o AHioKix uaHxva 




Father Timothy O'Keeffe* 

IT IS now several weeks since the Rev. Father 
Timothy D. O'Keeffe departed this life, 66 
years of age, at the Sisters' Hospital, in St. Louis, 
and his long residence in Cape Girardeau cer- 
tainly entitles him to more than a passing notice, 
even if his many amiable qualities of head and 
heart were to go hence unrecognized and unre- 
corded. Father O'Keeffe was born in County Cork, 
Ireland, and educated for the priesthood in the 
Catholic Irish College in Paris, France, where he 
also joined the order of the Lazarists. In about 
the year 1838 he came to the United States. He 
first resided at the St. Mary's Seminary, near 
Perry ville, Missouri, known then and now as "the 
Barrens," where he was a member of the faculty. 
After St. Vincent's College was erected in Cape 
Girardeau in 1840 he became a member of the col- 



*Father O'Keeffe died February 11, 1885, and for many years was the 
particular friend of my father-in-law, Mr. Andrew Giboney. At his 
request he married me to his daughter. Miss Mary Hunter Giboney. 
December 25, 1872, at Elmwood, althougrh we were not practical mem- 
1>ers of his church. Of coarse, we hold him in fond remembrance. 



78 Father Timothy O'Keeffe 

legiate faculty here, and together with Father 
Tornatori, the first president of the college, Father 
Timon, afterwards Bishop of Buffalo, eminent as a 
divine and scholar, and other distinguished men, 
who have gone to the realms of shade before him, 
labored to lay well and deep the foundation of this 
seat and hearth of learning and religion. He was 
one of the earliest procurators— or business man- 
agers—of the institution in this city. Father 
O'Keeffe, at the time of his death, was, therefore, 
one of our oldest citizens, and as such was respected 
by all who knew him, and by all who enjoyed his 
friendship. In everything that appertained to our 
interests and progress as a city he took a deep 
interest— and he was ever ready to aid in the pro- 
motion of any matter of public concern. He was a 
man of profound learning — of a wide range of infor- 
mation and liberal ideas— of progressive instincts. 
In personal appearance Father O'Keeffe was noble 
and commanding, being fully six feet high, and 
finely proportioned. In his manners he was genial 
and affable— in his disposition generous and patient 
—in bearing open and manly. As a priest, we are 
told, he was beloved by all who enjoyed the bene- 



Father Timothy O'Keeffe 79 

fits of his spiritual consolation, and we know that 
he was indefatigable in the discharge of his spir- 
itual duties and functions, and not infrequently 
have we met him in the summer's heat and win- 
ter's cold, in the day and night on lonely country 
roads on his spiritual errands coming from and 
going to the bedside of the humble and poor. As 
a teacher he was the faithful friend of his pupils 
and their exemplar. But the finished man— the 
public spirited citizen— the faithful teacher— the 
good priest, is no more, and, in the words of Jean 
Paul, ' 'the thunderbolt of Death has destroyed the 
diamond, and now the wax statue of the body 
slowly melts beneath the soil." 




MRS. JANK DAY GLASSCOCK 



Mrs. Jane Day Glasscock* 

TN the death of Mrs. Jane Day Glasscock, which 
-■■ occurred yesterday, Sunday, March 6, 1898, not 
only our county, but we can truly say our State, 
loses one of its most venerable residents. Mrs. 
Glasscock was born June 4, 1804, in Richmond, 
Va., and consequently on the day of her death 
was 93 years, 9 months and 2 days old. 

When she was about four years old, in 1808, her 
father moved from Virginia to Kentucky and she 
never forgot the trip by wagon across the Alle- 
ghenys, because as they were traveling along a 
mountain stream the wagon upset and she fell into 
the water. Her father first settled in Marseilles, 
in Kentucky, and there she became acquainted 
with Nathaniel W. Watkins, half-brother of Henry 
Clay, then a boy, and who afterwards, in 1820, 
when a young man, settled in Jackson, in this 
county, and for many years was one of the leading 
lawyers and citizens of this State. 

Pablished in March, 1898, in Cape Ciirardean Democrat. 



82 Mrs. Jane Day Glasscock 

In 1812 her father moved to Lexin^on, and she 
often said that she saw the Kentucky Volunteers, 
under General Adair, mustered into service and 
march through the streets of that town on their 
way to New Orleans. 

Her father died shortly after he settled in Lex- 
ington and her mother subsequently married a 
second time. She removed with the family to Ohio 
in 1814 and in 1816 to St. Louis, to what was then 
the Missouri Territory, and ever since that time 
Mrs. Glasscock has resided in Missouri. The trip 
to St. Louis was made by river on a keel boat and 
occupied three weeks. St. Louis was then a small 
village and when she lived there many Indians 
always were in and near the town. The family 
resided on a lot opposite where the Laclede Hotel 
now stands, then quite on the outskirts of the town. 

Mrs. Glasscock attended the school of Dr. Gid- 
dings, the first Protestant minister of St. Louis. 
The whipping post stood opposite this school and 
she saw two persons publicly whipped, which made 
a great impression on her mind. While living there 
she became acquainted with Mr. Charless, the 
founder of what is now the St Louis Republic, and 



Mrs. Jane Day Glasscock 83 

Mrs. Glasscock probably was for some time before 
her death the last person on earth who personally 
knew him. 

In 1818 the family moved to Jackson and since 
that time Mrs. Glasscock has lived in our county. 
When the family settled in Jackson Mrs. Glasscock 
said Dr. Neil, Johnson Ranney, Alexander Buckner, 
George Scripps, Willis McGuire, Dr. Priest, Judge 
Thomas, Mr. Evans, Maj. Gantt, Mr. Van Horn, 
Dr. Franklin Cannon, Henry Sanford, James Rus- 
sell and Mr. Chambers were the most prominent 
residents of the town. Rev. Thomas Green, a 
prominent and distinguished Baptist minister, also 
resided there. The court house, a small log build- 
ing, as well as the whipping post, a regular insti- 
tution of the time, stood on the public square. 

Mrs. Glasscock had a good memory to her latest 
days and vividly recollected many of the incidents 
that occurred in Jackson early in the century. 
When she first came to Jackson the Shawnee and 
Delaware Indians still resided in the northern part 
of the county and she well recollected the killing 
of Mrs. Burns by a Shawnee Indian and the great 
excitement this created. The Indians were given 



84 Mrs. Jane Day Glasscock 

a certain time within which to apprehend and bring 
in the murderer. In a few days they brought in 
the head, and she related it was placed on a pole 
and planted at the fork of the road leading to the 
Indian villages and allowed to decay there. 

Judge Thomas was the earliest territorial judge 
in this section and Mrs. Glasscock said that he 
came to his death by a fall from his horse. The 
two Sublettes were the desperate characters of the 
town and one of them, Bolin Sublette, when drunk 
would ride for sport into the hotel hall and no one 
on such an occasion dared to stop him. 

Mrs. Glasscock as a young lady was a member 
of the early society of our county and knew well all 
the leading pioneer families. She was a woman of 
tact, prudent in expression and generous and hos- 
pitable in disposition. 

In 1822 she married Mr. Scarlett Glasscock, 
who died in 1850. 

For many years before her death Mrs. Glasscock 
bravely struggled with adverse and unkind fortune, 
but she never lost her cheerful and amiable dispo- 
sition. She was active and industrious to the last 
and her courage, faith and hope never failed. She 



Mrs. Jane Day Glasscock 85 

had a fond affection for the descendants of the 
early settlers, the children, grand-children and 
great grand-children of the friends and companions 
of her youth. Greatly and deeply did she appre- 
ciate any kind and tender attentions to her from 
them in her old age. The last of her time and gen- 
eration she long unobtrusively lingered among us, 
but now in the early springtime of the year, 
lamented by four generations of her descendants 
and many friends, she goes to her peaceful and 
silent home, to her long rest. Soon gay flowers 
will bloom above her, the fragrant air will be filled 
with perfume and soft summer winds will sing her 
requiem. 




LEO DOYLE 



Leo Doyle' 



/^N January, 24, 1900, Leo Doyle died. He was 
^^ the son of Miles Doyle and Sarah Morrison, a 
sister of Hon. T. J. 0. Morrison, so long and so 
favorably known as the representative of the New 
Madrid District in the State Senate. Miles Doyle 
was an Irishman by birth, of the noblest type, a 
man of sterling virtue and integrity. In his youth 
he had followed the Austins from Missouri to Texas, 
but afterwards returned and married Miss Morrison, 
a member of one of the earliest American families, 
settling in the Spanish Dominions, west of the 
Mississippi. In about 1858, with his family, he 
moved to a farm a little north of Cape Girardeau 
(a farm his son owned until his death) and there 
Leo Doyle was born, June 14, 1832. Here he spent 
his youth, securing such an education as his father's 
limited means would permit. Between 1850 and 
1860 he and his brother Theodore, long since dead. 



*First published in the Cape Girardeau Democrat iu February, 1900. 



88 Leo Doyle 

maintained a wood yard to supply the boats plying 
the river and then altogether dependent on wood 
as fuel. 

During the war he removed to Cape Girardeau 
and with his brother-in-law, Patrick Garathy, en- 
tered into the mercantile business, and in this 
business he was engaged up to the time of his death 
— surviving his brother-in-law many years. He 
took a deep interest in everything tending to pro- 
mote the welfare of our city. For years he acted as 
secretary of the old Bloomfield Gravel Road, and 
contributed his stock to make that road the free 
public road we now have. For over thirty years, 
and until his death, he was treasurer of the Scott 
County Macadamized Road. At the time of his 
death he was a director of Houck's Missouri and 
Arkansas railroad, now constructing its line to this 
city. He was also a director and assisted in organ- 
izing the Perryville Railroad company. In 1880, 
when a company was organized to build a railroad 
from Cape Girardeau to a connection with the Iron 
Mountain railroad, Leo Doyle was one of the 
warmest friends of the enterprise, and one of the 
few citizens of Cape Girardeau who invested actual 



Leo Doyle 89 

cash in the bonds of the road. He became trustee 
for the bondholders, and as such trustee, when the 
attempt was made by the Gould interest to seize 
the road, manifested his zeal for the interests of 
the city and devotion to the parties owning the 
property, by instituting independent legal proceed- 
ings, and after a protracted and almost unexampled 
litigation, finally triumphantly emerged from the 
contest. At one time in that litigation he was cited 
to appear before the Supreme Court to show cause 
why he should not be punished for contempt, and 
although it seemed that his course would result in 
a heavy fine and imprisonment, his courage did not 
fail and he did not abandon the interests he repre- 
sented. 

For a number of years he was a member of the 
city council, and while in that capacity rendered 
invaluable service to our people. It should always 
be remembered that in 1876 he introduced the 
ordinance for settling and compromising the city 
railroad debt, and that through his efforts and the 
efforts of the then mayor, Hon. Leon J. Albert, 
(to his credit be it said) the city was rescued from 
the bankruptcy into which it had been plunged by 



90 Leo Doyle 

a wild and reckless administration. The new 
growth of our town, the restoration of value to city 
property, the new energy manifested by all of our 
people and new faith in our future, dates from the 
successful settlement of that railroad debt, pro- 
vided for and formulated by that ordinance. But 
he was a modest and unassuming man. He did 
not parade his official good work. He did not tell 
everybody about his great public spirit. Whenever 
he could he always assisted in promoting the gen- 
eral welfare. He had a kind and generous dispo- 
sition, a loving and affectionate heart. He was 
liberal in his dealings with others and prudent in 
his expenditures, without being parsimonious. He 
was honest and truthful, without guile and deceit. 
He was loyal to his friends. He was charitable, 
the father of the orphan and disinterested adviser 
of the widow. He was without ostentation, plain 
and simple in speech, plain and simple in dress, 
unusually intelligent in all things that came within 
the sphere of his observation, and loved reading. 
And he was kind to the brute creation and fond of 
dogs. He was methodical in all of his business. 
For years before his death he punctually kept a 



Leo Doyle 91 

daily weather record, as well as a record of the 
principal events occurring in the community— a 
veritable chronicle of the town. He was married 
twice, and his second wife surviving him deeply 
mourns his death. He left no children. 

Now after a life well spent, a life of honor, 
virtue, integrity and good work, he has fallen be- 
neath the sickle, like the ripened grain at harvest 
time, and been gathered with his fathers. 




:\IAP/rii\ LINN ci.AUhl- 



Martin Linn Clardy 

THE death of a distinguished citizen— not hold- 
ing a public position or the possessor of mil- 
lions of dollars— in these days is only noted in a 
slipshod manner in the news colums of the met- 
ropolitan newspapers— perchance accompanied on 
the same day or day afterwards by brief, meagre 
and inadequate editorial notice. The papers of the 
neighborhood where maybe he passed nearly all his 
life, reprint what the big newspapers so incom- 
pletely say without comment, and although familiar 
with his career, apparently seem to be unable to 
summarize for future time the salient events of his 
life and labors, the extent of his influence and the 
more subtle traits of his character. Thus often is 
lost forever by indifference the intellectual portrait 
of an important life. But if a man of vast wealth 
and possessions dies everybody takes notice and 
newspapers are full of comments. These observa- 
tions are prompted by the apparent indifference 
manifested in the press of Southeast Missouri as to 



94 Martin Linn Clardy 

the death of Martin Linn Clardy, and who for over 
forty-five years held a high and honorable position 
in Southeast Missouri and occupied a notable place 
in the state. More than that, he was the pride of 
his family and friends, an ornament of the legal 
profession, a leader in political affairs, prominent in 
Congress as a statesman, and an honor to his coun- 
try. It often happens that men are only known by 
the work with which they were last identified 
before death. The various vicissitudes of their 
career, at once an example and inspiration, are 
thus allowed to escape recollection. No minute 
inquiries are made when they should be made and 
many incidents in an important life are swallowed 
up by oblivion. Thus Mr. Clardy is referred to in 
some of the notices recording his death merely as 
a "railroad attorney." As if this fully described 
him and his life. Undoubtedly Mr. Clardy was 
eminent as a "railroad attorney," but he was emi- 
nent not because he had a railroad for a client, but 
because he was eminent as a man of vast executive 
ability, great versatility of mind, and eminent as 
a profound and philosophical lawyer. It is well to 
keep this in mind. 



Martin Linn Clardy 95 

Martin Linn Clardy was born on a farm in Ste. 
Genevieve county, April 26, 1844, and died on July 
5, 1914. He was of Kentucky ancestry. His father, 
Johnson B. Clardy, one of the early American 
pioneers, came to Ste. Genevieve county in 1825. 
His first education he received in the country school 
in the neighborhood where he was born. Undoubt- 
edly the strength of his understanding, the accu- 
racy of his discernment and his ambition for excel- 
lence might have been remarked from his infancy 
by a diligent observer. But such traces of early 
intellectual vigor are usually allowed to pass unob- 
served or at most elicit only a passing notice. We 
have it, however, from one who attended the same 
country school with him, that when a little boy 
in his teens he would mount a log or stump and 
make a speech or deliver a declamation to his 
fellow-scholars. Thus early did he begin, maybe 
all unconsciously, to cultivate that suave, persua- 
sive, convincing and logical method of public 
address for which he was ultimately so well known. 
After he left the country school, before the war, 
for a time he enjoyed instruction in the St. Louis 
University. When in April, 1861, the storm of the 



96 Martin Linn Clardy 

civil war arose, he enlisted in the Confederate army 
and with that army he remained as an officer in 
the cavalry in the trans-Mississippi department 
until the close of the conflict. It must have been 
after the war that he attended Virginia University 
and undoubtedly he studied law there. Then he 
lived in the state of Mississippi, where he married 
his first wife. In that state, I understand, he began 
to practice law. From Mississippi with his wife 
and family he returned to Missouri, and settled in 
St. Francois county in 1867 or 1868. 

After the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern 
was first opened he had his home at Delassus, a 
new town just laid out near Farmington. Here he 
lived when his first wife died. 

He began to practice law after the Drake test 
oath was declared unconstitutional. Then he 
formed a partnership in the practice of law with 
Judge William Carter. For many years the firm 
"Carter & Clardy" was the leading law firm in our 
section of the state. Judge Carter and Mr. Clardy 
were familiar figures in all the courts of Southeast 
Missouri. They were engaged in all important 
litigation. 



Martin Linn Clardy 97 

As an attorney Mr. Clardy diligently attended 
to the interests of his clients. When once employed 
in a case he never gauged his attention to it by the 
amount involved. This was his characteristical 
attitude to all business intrusted to him. His devo- 
tion to the interests of his humblest client was his 
introduction to great and important litigation. 

As an advocate in cases before a jury Mr. Clardy 
had few equals. Yet he was not loud, or boister- 
ous, or declamatory. Far from it. His oratorical 
efforts were always eminently sane. Common sense 
and the highest propriety distinguished his forensic 
pleas. It was for this reason that in the great 
criminal cases in which he was engaged he was so 
uniformly successful. But if anything, he was 
more successful as an advocate before the highest 
appellate courts, the Supreme court of the state 
and the United States. He had a profound analyt- 
ical mind, was capable of illuminating and illus- 
trating the deepest and profoundest questions of 
law and with master strokes apply the law to the 
facts of the case. In his arguments he was slow, 
deliberate and methodical. He was never in a 
hurry, and left nothing to chance, answering every 



98 Martin Linn Clardy 

important proposition, but leaving all immaterial 
propositions in a case without notice, and on which 
many advocates waste much time. Few members 
of the bar of this state victoriously established so 
many doubtful and contested legal propositions, 
and made them the settled law of the state. No 
man had a deeper or profounder knowledge of the 
swamp-land laws, or a firmer grasp on all the intri- 
cate questions involved in the various, and often 
contradictory statutes, relating to this subject. 
To him, more than anyone else, the final settlement 
of all the great questions involved in the swamp- 
land titles in Southeast Missouri in a great measure 
may be attributed. By the final and speedy settle- 
ment of the questions involved in this litigation the 
growth and prosperity of this section was greatly 
promoted. 

When in the zenith of his reputation as a lawyer 
in our section of Missouri and his reputation well 
established in the state and shortly after he mar- 
ried his present wife, and who survives him to 
lament his loss, he was elected as a democrat to 
represent his district in congress. He served for 
five consecutive terms, was a member of the Forty- 



Martin Linn Clardy 99 

sixth, Forty-seventh, Forty-eighth, Forty-ninth 
and Fiftieth Congress. His services in Congress 
were notable. He was indefatigable in promoting 
the interests of his district, a district with various 
and conflicting interests, for within his district, for 
instance, were located the greatest lead-producing 
mines in the world. Although a democrat he would 
not allow those interests to be injured and never 
failed or neglected on all proper occasions to oppose 
unjust legislation affecting these interests. Nor 
did his zeal for his party make him blind to the 
merits at least of some of his opponents, for it is 
well known that he and the late President McKin- 
ley, when they were both members of the House, 
were warm and devoted friends. Made conserva- 
tive by experience, he never could belong to that 
class of politicians who are always ready to destroy 
what they have neither the capacity to build up or 
to appreciate what has been built up and estab- 
lished by others. That the value of his services 
were fully understood is sufficiently shown by the 
fact that although representing a doubtful demo- 
cratic district he was successfully re-elected four 
times and was finally only defeated by a tidal wave 



100 Martin Linn Clardy 

of adverse political sentiment sweeping over the 
whole country. When defeated he was to some 
extent a national character and it was almost cer- 
tain that if re-elected he would become conspicu- 
ous in our national legislature. But this was not 
to be. No one lost more than the people of his 
district by his early retirement from public life. 
In Congress he was distinguished by his modest 
and unassuming conduct and devotion to his duties. 
He was not a frequent speaker, but when he spoke 
what he said attracted attention. It is not the 
frequent and uproarious speaker, always on the 
floor, that wields influence in a legislative assembly 
such as the Congress of the United States. 

In the political affairs of the state during this 
period of his life and before he became identified 
with a railroad system, Mr. Clardy wielded a pow- 
erful influence. More than any one else he repre- 
sented the political ideals of Southeast Missouri. 
His devoted followers were many. He was a leader 
of first importance in the political conventions 
that prevailed before the present grab-bag system 
of selecting candidates for official positions was 
adopted— a system which crowds out of the race 



Martin Linn Clardy 101 

for promotion poor and modest and unassuming 
men, but opens the door wide to men of wealth— 
and the impudent, self-seeking and loud-mouthed 
demagogues. 

His efforts were also directed in these old 
conventions to secure for his party the nomination 
for office of able and honest men. His services to 
his party were fully appreciated by all interested 
in the success of popular government. 

After his congressional career came to an end 
Mr. Clardy resumed the practice of law at Farm- 
ington. Like others before him, and no doubt like 
many that came and will come after him, he found 
that ten years of public life in Congress had not 
added anything to his fortune. Pleasant though 
the service may be, it is equally true that no one 
can honestly accumulate a fortune in such service. 
So Mr. Clardy again began to practice law. He 
could rely on an extensive local practice in the 
country, but naturally he thought of something 
more remunerative than such a practice. Hence 
when the position of associate general attorney of 
the Missouri Pacific was tendered him by Mr. Priest 
he accepted the employment. He was eminently 



102 Martin Linn Clardy 

qualified for such legal service. Of a liberal and 
generous disposition his first aim was to establish 
better and more cordial relations between the peo- 
ple and the railroad. In every possible case it was 
his aim to avoid litigation. Far different from 
many attorneys, representing railroads, whose only 
object seems to be to foster contention and acri- 
mony, Mr. Clardy urged the settlement of every 
doubtful claim. In this way quickly much Missouri 
Pacific litigation disappeared from the court docket. 
A short time after Mr. Clardy became associate 
general attorney Mr. Priest was appointed judge 
of the United States district court by President 
Cleveland and Mr. Clardy was made general attor- 
ney of the railroad. It was then that he took 
ground against the maintainance of an active rail- 
road lobby at the state capital. He strongly in- 
sisted that the railroads should not be represented 
by an agent when the legislature was in session. 
His views finally prevailed and the method of 
secretly attempting to influence legislation by sin- 
ister methods was brought to an end. If Mr. 
Clardy's ideas had prevailed eight ,or ten years 
earlier much prejudice against railroads in this 



Martin Linn Clardy 103 

state would never have found footing in the popular 
mind. Be this as it may this struggle in the Mis- 
souri Pacific system which finally led to the election 
of Mr. Clardy as vice-president and general solicitor 
would be an interesting chapter in his life if it 
could be fully and truly revealed. 

For several years before his death Mr. Clardy 
was the dominant figure in all matters appertain- 
ing to the legal affairs of the Missouri Pacific sys- 
tem. His counsel and advice was sought by all in 
charge of that great property. This year he spent 
no inconsiderable time in New York in consultation 
in regard to the legal status of its financial affairs. 
He had a conservative mind and was capable of 
evolving out of apparently incoherent subjects an 
organized legal entity. More than that, often his 
advice was sought by great and able attorneys in 
charge of the legal affairs of other great railway 
systems in the west. He intuitively understood 
the tendency of all the present railroad legislation 
and carefully shaped the course of his corporation 
to meet the future requirements of the people. I 
have often heard him say that it would be a mistake 
to antagonize any reasonable legislation. His idea 



104 Martin Linn Clardy 

always was to co-operate with the popular demand, 
and by co-operation to build a system up that would 
conserve the interests of the owners of the railroad 
properties and at the same time protect the people 
against extortion. It was along these lines that he 
directed his labors, but when unjust and confis- 
catory laws were enacted and resistance became a 
duty be advised legal proceedings. Only two days 
before his death, in view of the late decision of the 
supreme court of our state explaining and defining 
the power of the Missouri Public Utilities commis- 
sion, he arranged for a meeting of the representa- 
tives of the railroads of the state at his office to 
consider a full presentation of the actual financial 
condition of the roads of the state to secure from 
the commission relief from the existing oppressive 
laws. He felt confident that with the law of the 
state construed as it has been construed by our 
supreme court that the commission would give 
speedy relief in all proper cases and thus amicable 
relations at once be established between the rail- 
roads and the people. 

But he died before this meeting. 

It will be a long time before the owners of the 



Martin Linn Clardy 105 

Missouri Pacific system will again secure a repre- 
sentative as wise and far-seeing in counsel, as 
profound in the observation of the philosophy of 
events, as astute and compromising in disposition 
and at the same time so well qualified to make the 
corporation popular with all reasonable and just 
men. 

And we all have to die. 

After having said this of Mr. Clardy as a lawyer, 
as a party leader, as a member of Congress, and as 
an employe and officer of a railroad system, I may 
also say that in all his various employment and 
offices, he never forgot his love of the farm— that 
he loved agriculture and was devoted to stock rais- 
ing. His farm near Farmington was his delight. 
Here when wearied of work he came for rest and 
recreation, to harvest his crops, to mow his meadows 
and to view his herds of cattle and his horses. 
Even in the midst of his arduous work he found 
time to attend the county fairs of Southeast Mis- 
souri where he exhibited his fast horses and fine 
cattle. Maybe his dream was to finally retire from 
the activities of life to his farm. But dreams, with 
most of us, are only "gay castles in the clouds." 



106 Martin Linn Clardy 

On the whole, the character of Mr. Clardy was 
amiable. He had a benevolent disposition, and often 
assisted those who had maligned him when they 
applied to him for aid. He never took occasion to 
provoke those that were his enemies, but in fact he 
had only such enemies as he raised by his superior 
merit, the bright lustre of his abilities and the con- 
tempt with which he viewed the methods by which 
they expected to succeed. 

He was candid and sincere in expressing his 
opinion, when he expressed an opinion at all. He 
was, however, cautious in expressing his thoughts 
about others, but open and communicative to those 
that possessed his full confidence. 

He was a man of great equanimity and never 
betrayed an indecent impatience. 

When in consultation with others on important 
matters of a legal character, or involving business 
propositions, he would listen to all that was said by 
others without interruption— for he was self-con- 
tained — and then expressed his views, and I am 
told that generally his views were adopted. He 
did not think so highly of himself as to believe that 
he could not receive light from others on subjects 



Martin Linn Clardy 107 

they had examined and observations they had made. 
Yet while he did not neglect the observations of 
others he did not blindly submit to them. 

In disposition he was cheerful and when at 
leisure anxious to promote mirth by making face- 
tious and humorous remarks, but in a quiet, in- 
offensive and unobtrusive way. 

He was remarkable in this that he could with 
uncommon readiness and certainty conjecture men's 
inclinations and capacity by their appearance, 
expression and even walk. It is thus that in the 
selection of jurors to try causes in which he was 
engaged he was considered uncommonly fortunate. 

He was retiring in manner, in conduct modest 
and unassuming. Although overwhelmed with 
business in the last few years of his life, he was 
always accessible and ready to give attention to 
his old friends, for he was greatly devoted to his 
friends and ever ready to serve them. 

He never advertised himself and it is remark- 
able that in all the various publications of the state, 
and which from time to time are inflicted on us and 
from which it is almost impossible to escape, noth- 



108 Martin Linn Clardy 

ing can be found relating to him and his life. In 
the congressional directory he compressed his 
biographical sketch to six lines. 

In everything relating to the prosperity of 
Southeast Missouri he took a deep pride and he 
was a man of great public spirit. 

This, too, should be said that he was gentle and 
refined in his conduct— that he treated all who had 
any business to transact with him with respect and 
consideration— that he never was arrogant and 
overbearing to those that were subordinate to him. 

The lady, who as his secretary for a number of 
years, faithfully and vigilantly assisted him in his 
work as I well observed, he treated with high 
courtesy and all ladies that came within the sphere 
of his social life he distinguished by chivalrous 
attention. 

His devotion to his family was recognized by all 
his friends and they knew that he was faithful and 
loyal as a husband. 

But we must "All go into one place; all are of 
the dust, and all turn to dust again." 




THOMAS BKCKWITH 



Thomas Beckwith* 

Farmer- Archaeologist 

TL^ANY works of notable value, such as the Beck- 
-*■ ■*• with collection, now installed and in posses- 
sion of this Normal School, have been built up 
unconsciously. To make such a collection required 
much labor, great patience, and infinite attention. 
More than that, it required much time. But this 
collection was not made by one who had no other 
business, but was made during the leisure hours of 
many years as an agreeable and interesting recrea- 
tion, diverting the mind from more material affairs. 
For years it was a business that gave employment 
to hours that are too often idled away. It has been 
truly said that the best of us are idle half the time. 
Anyway, this is certain, and this collection illus- 
trates what I say, that however much we may be 
engrossed with business matters, we still have time 
for pursuits that give a higher and nobler tone to 



*An address delivered at the Normal School Auditorium on Monday 
evening, October 2b. A. D. 1914. 



110 Thomas Beckwith 

life. It is also true that the men who are engaged 
in such work are hardly ever able to correctly 
appreciate its value. Time and distance are neces- 
sary to set off and confirm the work accomplished. 
This too is true, that whatever is done best is done 
from a natural bent and disposition of the mind 
without premeditation. Genius acts invisibly and 
executes its appointed task with little ostentation. 
Those often do best who have least ambition to 
excel. Their knowledge keeps pace with their 
capacity. The more they do the more they can do. 
While doing work they prepare and qualify them- 
selves for other and greater work. 

These remarks apply particularly to the remark- 
able work of Mr. Beckwith. For many years he 
gave most of his leisure hours to making a purely 
local anthropological collection— a collection that 
stands alone in this country. In making this col- 
lection he followed the natural bent of his mind. 
Without premeditation and ostentation he executed 
his work. He did it because he was impelled by an 
unseen force, because his soul delighted in the 
work. His intellect expanded with the work, and 
material affairs generally were subordinated to 



Thomas Beckwith 111 

those of the mind. A pursuit which was at first a 
mere interesting pastime gradually led him into 
higher regions of thought, and although he had the 
benefit of only a limited education, this pursuit 
made him a scholar, a thinker and a philosopher. 
Such is the recompense of those who devote even 
a small part of daily life to something beyond the 
mere material things of this world. 

Under the agreement with Mr. Beckwith by 
which he donated to this Normal School his invalu- 
able collection, it is" expressly stipulated that 
annually an address on the subject of archaeology 
shall be made here— this in order to arouse an 
interest in this important subject and a deeper 
study of what yet remains or may be discovered 
hereafter, especially in our section of Missouri, of 
archaeological and anthropological value. 

Accordingly, having been somewhat instru- 
mental in securing for this institution this collection 
from Mr. Beckwith, I have been requested to read 
the first paper, as required by the agreement. It 
has seemed to me, however, that the first address 
to be made here should relate rather to the life 
history of Thomas Beckwith than to an analysis of 



112 Thomas Beckwith 

the value of the great collection that has been made 
public property by his gift to this school, or to 
archaeology in general, or to Missouri archaeology 
in particular, even if I were capable to discuss a 
subject requiring so much more learning than I 
possess. Also I am sure that hereafter questions 
hke these will be asked by many visitors looking 
over this collection. Who was Thomas Beckwith? 
What manner of man was he? Where was he 
born? What was his descent? Where did he spend 
his childhood? What were his early surroundings? 
What were his educational advantages— and many 
other questions of like nature— and finally. Why 
did he make this collection, anyway? We all want 
to know something about those that have done 
or accomplished something remarkable. So I make 
the life history of Thomas Beckwith and how he 
became interested in archaeology the subject of 
my paper this evening. 

Thomas Beckwith was born in Mississippi county 
in 1840. His grandfather, Newman Beckwith, was 
a native of Fairfax county, Virginia. In 1811 he 
moved west across the mountains to Wheeling, 
there bought or built a flatboat and loaded on it his 



Thomas Beckwith 113 

family and household goods and floated down the 
river to Norfolk, in what is now Mississippi county 
in the then Missouri Territory, where he landed in 
the spring of 1812. Here he remained for several 
years. In the spring of 1815 he settled below 
Belmont on the ridge long known as Hunter's Ridge 
and now as O'Bryan's Ridge. This ridge is about 
three miles long and half a mile wide and in the 
early times was a great resort for game in time of 
flood. From this ridge afterwards he moved to a 
point back of Wolf Island on the chute. Here he 
opened a plantation, which, after his death, was 
greatly enlarged by his son Quiros, the father of 
Thomas Beckwith. At that time Smithland, in 
Kentucky, was the nearest and most important 
trading point, some eighty miles distant, for the 
people of that section of Missouri Territory. The 
ordinary method of going to Smithland was by 
pirogue, that is to say, in a long dugout, usually 
thirty or forty feet long, three feet wide and eight- 
een inches or more deep, made out of a sassafras 
or Cottonwood tree, a light, tough wood. Such 
boats are easily worked going upstream by paddling, 
cordeling, or poling. No inconsiderable amount of 



114 Thomas Beckwith 

freight was carried in that way. When Thomas 
Beckwith was born, and for some time afterwards, 
the country had no regular mercantile houses or 
stores, and hence a trip to Smithland was the usual 
method of obtaining supplies. However, flatboats, 
called trading boats, then floated irregularly down 
the river, loaded with a great variety of supplies 
such as wagons, plows, bells that could be heard 
for two miles, dry goods, broadcloths, silks, calicoes, 
sugar, coffee and molasses— in fact, these trading 
boats carried everything and more than can be 
found in an ordinary general store at present. 
These traveling merchants would semi-occasionally 
tie up in front of the house of a prominent planter 
and remain for several days until the people near 
there and back of the river bank were supplied 
with such goods as they wanted, then drop down 
the river a couple of miles to another neighborhood. 
The trading boats usually started out from Pitts- 
burg, Cincinnati or Louisville, and were loaded 
w^ith merchandise of no inconsiderable value. 

The settlement back of Wolf Island before the 
war was considered the richest and most important 
settlement in what is now Mississippi county. The 



Thomas Beckwith 115 

soil was exceedingly fertile and yielded great crops 
of corn, and agriculture was very profitable. The 
planters were all slave owners, and among them 
Beckwith's father was the wealthiest and Mr. 
Beckwith was his only child. He owned, so Mr. 
Beckwith tells us, five thousand acres of land— 
1, 100 of it cleared, a sawmill, a grist mill, fifty head 
of horses and mules, two hundred head of cattle, 
three hundred hogs, stock in the Union Bank of 
Charleston, stock in the Hickman Railroad, and a 
big woodyard on the river. In addition ninety- 
seven slaves, and these slaves together with his 
father, mother and himself, he loved to say, ' 'made 
one hundred in the family." And he further says 
that he believes the slaves were all ' 'contented and 
happy." 

Thus he describes his childhood life on the plan- 
tation. "The white and negro children grew up in 
the same yard and played and frolicked together, 
hunted small game and caught snow birds in their 
dead-falls and traps, and learned to swim together 
in the river and bayous. They yoked up the calves 
and rode the colts. When I was a child we raised 
a very fine mule, and I have seen him stop and kick 



116 Thomas Beckwith 

all of his gearing off, and my father always con- 
tended that the little negroes and myself had 
spoiled the mule when a colt. The children, both 
white and black, grew up with a strong affection 
for one another. We felt as a large family." And 
Mr. Beckwith says that the little negroes, when 
they heard his father coming home riding "Old 
Bald," a gentle, half -Indian pony, would run and 
meet him on the road, screaming out "Martinep" 
(Master), catch "Old Bald" by the tail and pull 
back, and so he would drag them up to the house. 
It is such happy scenes and such a life on his 
father's old plantation back of Wolf Island that he 
loved to relate. 

In those days in the fall of the year all the men 
and boys would mount their horses and with guns 
and dogs hunt wild hogs, of which the woods and 
swamps were then full. Those that were fat would 
be shot and tied with ropes to the tails of the 
horses and dragged home to be cleaned and salted 
down. "Many a wild hog," he says, "tied to the 
tail of my horse did I drag home when a boy. Wild 
hogs were also trapped in large pens 20x40 feet, 
with a door raised on one side set on a trigger. 



Thomas Beckwith 117 

Corn was spread in and outside of the pen and one 
ear placed on the trigger, covered with leaves to 
prevent the hogs from setting off the trigger until 
the whole gang was in the pen. Then, when the 
scattered corn was gone, in search of more corn, 
the hogs would discover the ear of corn on the 
trigger and set it oif ; and thus the whole bunch 
would be captured in the pen. ' ' This, Mr. Beckwith 
tells, was "great sport." 

From boyhood he was a great hunter. Elks 
were found in Southeast Missouri as late as 1860. 
In 1830 bears were so numerous that in the fall of 
that year a party of bear hunters from Kentucky 
camped on Jamxcs' Bayou to kill bears and render 
the fat into oil. The woods in his youth and early 
manhood were alive with game, and the river and 
bayous back of Wolf Island were full of fish and 
swarmed with geese and ducks. Mr. Beckwith was 
a splendid marksman. As a small boy he was 
sent out in order to save the apple crop, to shoot 
paraquets, a species of parrot that now has entirely 
disappeared from our locahty. 

But the great event of his boyhood was his first 
bear hunt When he was fourteen years old, he 



118 Thomas Beckwith 

says, "I was in company with Mr. James Hush 
and Mr. Gaty, old bear hunters, and Mr. Samuel 
Baldwin and Mr. Poplin, young bear hunters. We 
had twelve dogs — four large curs and eight hounds. 
Mr. Baldwin owned six of the hounds, including 
the start dog called 'Old Black, ' and another called 
'Dan,' a lean, spotted dog with long, pendulous 
ears, that was a remarkable trailer. For this dog 
Mr. Baldwin had paid Mr. Gaty forty dollars. We 
made our camp in Little River Swamp about ten 
miles southwest of where Sikeston is now located, 
and starting early in the morning after we had 
established our camp, rode out, the dogs scattering 
in the woods trailing deer and coons. Old 'Dan^ 
was trotting along behind our horses, paying no 
attention whatever to the other dogs. After we 
had gone about two or three miles 'Dan' dropped 
his head to the ground and began to smell around 
and finally smelled a twig and then raised a long, 
mournful howl. Mr. Baldwin said, 'It's a bear.' 
Mr. Hush got off his horse, tightened his girth, 
shortened his stirrups, and tied his hat under his 
chin, and I did likewise. We went on a little 
further. 'Dan' stopped and gave his master an 



Thomas Beckwith 119 

inquisitive look. Mr. Baldwin then dismounted 
from his horse, found the trail and started 'Dan' 
on the right end of it— for it seems impossible for 
dogs to distinguish the right from the wrong end 
of a trail— and then 'Dan' started off trailing, per- 
fectly satisfied." 

On that hunt, Mr. Beckwith tells us, they killed 
five bear in a day and a half. He says he never 
saw a bear let go and fall out of a tree, but that he 
then ' 'saw a bear when fifty feet or more up the 
tree and near the body of the tree let go and fall 
about twelve feet and again clasping the body of 
the tree with his front feet continue to drop in that 
way until he came to the ground, never stopping, 
but raising a great fog of dust and barking, and 
thus descending with great rapidity." 

In his various hunting expeditions Mr. Beckwith 
claims he killed hundreds of deer, coons, mink and 
other wild animals, and ducks, geese and other 
feathered game without number. Hunting was 
with him an absorbing passion and the delight of 
his life. 

Corn was at that time the principal crop raised 
on the farms along the river. The demand for corn 



120 Thomas Beckwifh 

on the southern plantations below and as far as 
New Orleans was unlimited. The farmers along 
the river in Southeast Missouri had an easy and 
cheap route to the great southern markets. That 
corn by rail from the interior regions north of the 
Ohio could ever reach these markets was undreamed 
of. The corn crop raised on the new and virgin 
farms of unrivaled fertility along the river in our 
state yielded great profits. When the Beckwiths 
first began to farm they shipped their corn on flat- 
boats to the plantations on the lower Mississippi, 
and at a later period by steamboat. These flatboats 
were generally built up on the Kanawha, loaded 
with salt and floated down the river to Smithland, 
sold there to farmers and merchants farther down 
the river and loaded by them with corn and in 
many instances with hogs, cattle, lumber and what- 
ever they had for sale, and floated south. The 
extent of this flatboat traffic is shown by the fact 
that Mr. Beckwith, when he was a boy, once saw 
on a stretch of river fifteen miles long nineteen 
flatboats floating down. But about 1850 the flat- 
boats disappeared and people began to ship by 
steamboats. Prior to 1861 nearly all the planters 



Thomas Beckwith 121 

on the river where there were favorable landings 
kept woodyards. Beckwith's father kept a wood- 
yard and sold, so he says, 1,200 cords of wood a 
year to steamboats. The wood was generally 
loaded on wood boats sixteen feet wide and about 
sixty feet long and corded on these boats two cords 
to a rank. When a steamboat came up the river 
the bell would be sounded two or three hundred 
yards from the landing, the men in charge of the 
woodyard would rush out, untie the wood boat and 
get aboard. The bow line of the wood boat was 
then tied to the bow of the steamboat and a big 
cable with a slip knot in the end of it was carried 
back to the stern of the wood boat, slipped over 
the near corner of the wood boat, drawn tight at 
the bow of the steamboat and made fast. Thus the 
weight in towing the boat was put upon this big 
cable. The steamboat would run at half speed for 
about five or six miles so as to give time to take the 
wood off the wood boat; then the wood boat was 
turned loose and the man, with the aid of one or 
two oars, would take it back and tie up at the wood- 
yard. In that way much time was saved to boats 
going up the river. When boats came down the 



122 Thomas Beckwith 

river they would land at the woodyard and take as 
much wood as they needed. But during the war 
wood cutting ceased and the boats began to use 
coal. This wood business was very important in 
cleaning up and developing the land near the river 
and bringing it into cultivation. It greatly pro- 
moted the development of the country. The timber 
along the Mississippi was immense in size, and 
without this market for the cordwood which the 
steamboats then afforded the opening of the farms 
would have been much slower. Mr. Beckwith said 
that he once saw a cottonwood seven feet in diam- 
eter at the butt, which made twenty-seven cords 
of wood. Another cottonwood measured eleven 
feet in diameter three feet from the ground. Such 
was the magnitude of the timber then growing in 
Mississippi county, and in Southeast Missouri. 

Noth withstanding his father's wealth Mr. Beck- 
with 's educational advantages were not good. We 
had no public schools then in Missouri. He had no 
instruction such as even the humblest and poorest 
child now enjoys. Although his father was amply 
able to provide a private tutor for his only son, he 
did not do so, likely deeming it more important to 



Thomas Beckwith 123 

make him a man of affairs, rather than a scholar; 
and a man of affairs, a business man, he emphat- 
ically became, although the force of his latent 
genius gradually led him to take a profound interest 
in the anthropological history of the country in 
which he lived. 

He describes the schoolhouse back of Wolf 
Island, where he enjoyed his first educational 
advantages, as follows: "The schoolhouse was 
built of rude logs, notched down at the corners and 
covered with four-foot boards. There was no other 
flooring but old Mother earth, no chinking or daub- 
ing of the space between the logs, no loft in the 
house; a doorway was cut, but no door to close it. 
When the house was not occupied, hogs, cattle and 
horses could go in. A broad plank ten or twelve 
feet long with the edge against the wall and sloping 
out was used to write upon. A log was cut just 
above this desk to give light. A fire was made on 
the ground in the middle of this room and the 
smoke passed through the roof in the gable end of 
the house." In such a schoolhouse Mr. Beckwith 
received the first rudiments of an education. After 
he was old enough to go away he was sent to school 



124 Thomas Beckwith 

in Clinton, Kentucky. Then he attended Rice 
Academy, one of the earliest educational institu- 
tions of Cape Girardeau, for a year or two, and in 
1857 entered a school or college of New Albany, 
Indiana. From this it is quite apparent that Mr. 
Beckwith's education was far from methodical. 
Whatever learning he secured he undoubtedly owed 
largely to his native ability, rather than to any 
systematic course of instruction. 

In 1858 he came home during the great overflow 
of that year. When he returned from New Albany 
he was, he says, eighteen years of age, strong and 
large for his age, a fine horseman and a good 
marksman. "Notwithstanding the wealth of my 
father," he tells us, "I had been brought up to 
work and to do any kind of work that came to 
hand." Evidently some of the large planters and 
slave owners of that time in Missouri raised and 
educated their sons for labor rather than for idle- 
ness. The river was rising rapidly when he came 
home, and his father, becoming apprehensive for 
the safety of about one hundred and fifty head of 
cattle in the swamps and bayous west of Wolf 
Island, sent him with some negroes to bring the 



Thomas Beckwith 125 

cattle to a group of mounds some twenty-five feet 
high, quadrangular in form, with a top 110 to 160 
feet long; and to these mounds some of the cattle, 
after great labor, were brought. This overflow, 
which came after the corn had been laid by and the 
wheat was ready to harvest, was very devastating 
in its effects. After the water went down there 
was no grass, the fences were washed away, and 
the levee, which had been constructed by the county 
out of the proceeds of the swamp lands, was almost 
destroyed. 

In perhaps 1859, Mr. Beckwith for a time took 
a commercial course at the Bryan & Stratton Busi- 
ness College in St. Louis. The following year 
found him at home, and here he seems to have 
remained during the war. 

When the war came on, Mississippi county had 
not yet recovered from the effects of the disastrous 
overflow of 1858. In 1862 another overflow occurred 
but not so disastrous, because it came earlier in the 
season and gave the farmers a chance after the 
overflow was over to raise at least a partial crop. 

But the war financially ruined his father. In 
1861 the steamboats began to use coal instead of 



126 Thomas Beckwith 

wood, and this cut off his woodyard revenue. In 
1862 General Jeff Thompson took $60,000 in cash 
from the Union Bank of Charleston, thus making 
the stock of the bank worthless. The Hickman 
Railroad became insolvent. The emancipation proc- 
lamation freed the negroes. The cleared land grew 
up for want of cultivation. No labor could be 
secured to rebuild the fences washed away by the 
floods or to cultivate the land. Predatory bands 
carried away cattle, hogs and other stock. The 
value of the land decreased to nothing. ' 'All this 
shows," Mr. Beckwith afterwards said, "how 
quickly a fortune can be dissipated, with no fault of 
the owner, by circumstances beyond his control." 

His father died in September, 1862. Disaster 
after disaster gradually swept away the work of 
his life. After his death Mr. Beckwith took charge 
of what was left of the wreck. Some of the negroes 
still remained on the plantation, and with these 
Mr. Beckwith farmed as best he could during the 
turmoil of war. 

In 1863 he married and gradually began to 
repair the losses sustained, not, however, without 
suffering from the depredations of lawless bands 



Thomas Beckwith 127 

roving through the country up to 1865. He was 
full of energy and enterprise, and undaunted by 
such losses as he under the circumstances sustained, 
he extended his farming operations, although also 
often interrupted by overflows of the river, which 
from 1858 to 1870 seemed more frequent than at 
any former period. Nevertheless, during this time 
he successfully organized his farming on a new 
basis with free labor. The old fields of his father 
were restored to cultivation and to these he added 
new, wide extending acres. Although his farming 
proved profitable, the constant and undivided atten- 
tion to this work and the annoyance of uncertain 
labor convinced him that it would be just as profit- 
able to rent his lands and thus secure some leisure 
and respite from the constant annoyance to which 
all those are subjected who attempt to cultivate 
large tracts of land. Accordingly, in 1870, he 
changed his method of managing his land, renting 
the cleared farms and arranging to have other lands 
cleared by leases under contract. He removed to 
Charleston just after the St. Louis, Iron Mountain 
and Southern Railroad had been completed from 
St. Louis to Belmont. Near Charleston he also 



128 Thomas Beckwith 

purchased land, which he began to clear for culti- 
vation. In everything relating to material matters 
he was, during many years, a busy and active man. 
But he was not altogether absorbed in making 
money. Although solicitous for financial success, 
this was not the only and sole aim of his life. He 
never belonged to the sordid class of money grab- 
bers. While looking out for the material things of 
this world, he did not forget what so many do in 
the mad rush for wealth— that a part of life, at 
least, ought to be devoted to higher purposes. He 
was not altogether steeped in selfishness. He did 
not measure everything by the standard of the 
dollar. Never was it his sole ambition in some way, 
straight or crooked, to capture other men's mules 
or property. He was not money or property mad. 
Such were the mental characteristics of Mr. Beck- 
with, and thus it came that he made the unique 
and wonderful archaeological and anthropological 
collection he donated to this Normal School to 
remain here as a perpetual memorial, when all 
those of his time who have made the gathering of 
riches their sole and only aim in life, shall have 



Thomas Beckwith 129 

sunk in well-deserved oblivion and all their riches 
and wealth shall have vanished into thin air. 

When Mr. Beckwith first became interested in 
archaeology is not definitely known. This is certain 
—that the great mound on his father's plantation 
must have attracted his attention when a small boy. 
He observed, even then, that the corners of this 
mound were as square as if the work had been done 
by an experienced builder. This mound was twenty- 
five to thirty feet higher than the general level of 
the land. It was 110 feet wide and 160 feet long, 
the top covered with burned clay to a depth of 
about five feet; and fifty feet from this truncated 
mound there was another truncated mound nearly 
as high and seventy or eighty feet wide. On about 
four hundred acres of land around these mounds 
relics of every description were discovered by the 
negro plowmen, and this, too, attracted his earliest 
attention. A few miles away from these mounds, 
on Pinhook Ridge, he saw other groups of mounds. 
In fact, in almost every part of Mississippi county, 
in the deepest recesses of the forest, on his hunting 
expeditions and other occasions, he observed these 
silent memorials of the prehistoric inhabitants of 



130 Thomas Beckwith 

the country. At first he considered these mounds 
only as offering a harbor of refuge for his stock in 
times of overflow. Then the pecuHar shape of the 
mounds, the location, and possible purpose began 
to interest him. Thus he discovered a group of 
mounds in the neighborhood of his land, which 
became known as Beckwith's Fort, because plainly 
erected for defensive purposes. Finally, many 
years ago, he met Col. Norris, long connected with 
the Smithsonian Institute, who visited Mississippi 
county to explore some of the mounds of the county, 
and with him he made some explorations. Mr. 
Norris impressed upon him the importance of a 
study of these mounds. He undoubtedly implanted 
in Mr. Beckwith's mind the seed of that love for 
archaeological and anthropological study and invest- 
igation which for years occupied his mind during 
his leisure hours. If the mounds had before that 
time arrested his attention and the relics discovered 
aroused his curiosity, the thought now took posses- 
sion of his mind that maybe from what remained 
a history or picture could be secured of what these 
prehistoric people really were, how they lived, how 
far they were advanced in the domestic arts, how 



Thomas Beckwith 131 

they cultivated the soil, how they hunted, what 
was the character of their institutions. And from 
their relics he was convinced that at least some of 
their thoughts and ideas might be divined. 

Once interested in the scientific value of any 
investigation and impressed with the value of such 
study, he gave nearly all his leisure time to the 
study and investigation of the mounds in our sec- 
tion of the state and to the works of the Mound 
Builders, so called, as revealed by such specimens 
as have escaped the wreck and tooth of time. He 
studied the subject from every viewpoint. He 
familiarized himself with the learning of other 
investigators. During the course of forty years 
he accordingly made one of the greatest local arch- 
aeological collections in the world, a collection not 
composed of rare and unique specimens gathered 
together from the four corners of the earth, but 
unexampled and remarkable because locally col- 
lected from the mounds of the upper St. Francois 
Basin and principally from mounds in Southeast 
Missouri counties; and because from this collection 
can be secured almost a perfect picture of the 
domestic institutions and civilization of a group of 



132 Thomas Beckwith 

the race of so-called Mound Builders living in our 
section of the Mississippi Valley. Every object in 
the Beckwith collection sheds some light on the 
character of the particular prehistoric people that 
lived here. The value of Mr. Beckwith's work lies 
in this— that it gives to the scientific anthropolog- 
ical student precise information as to the institu- 
tions of the so-called Mound Builders in this partic- 
ular locality. Only a work such as Mr. Beckwith 
performed could give such facts. Finally, what he 
collected he embodied in a little work, which, how- 
ever defective in literary merit, is of great value to 
all interested in anthropological study. 

It is a wide step from a generalization as to the 
character and institutions of the Mound Builders 
of the United States, such as is usually given by 
writers, to a precise statement of the distinctive 
character of the institutions of that group of Mound 
Builders dwelling in dim ages past back of Wolf 
Island and in four counties of Southeast Missouri, 
the field in which Mr. Beckwith so assiduously 
labored as evidenced by his collection. To many, 
such a work may seem of little value, yet it is such 
work that gives us glimpses of the long-distant 



Thomas Beckwith 133 

ages, that enables us to trace the first feeble steps 
made by man on his onward march to a higher and 
better civilization. Human bones found in caves 
of vast antiquity, mixed up with the bones of ani- 
mals, give us an idea of the antiquity of man. The 
Lake dwellings tell us of the first feeble efforts of 
man to establish a civilized order. The implements 
of the stone age are the records of a period when 
the use of iron was unknown. Everything relating 
to the history of man ought to be of absorbing 
interest to us. It is for this reason that the study 
of archaeology is the most interesting of all studies. 
Almost daily new facts as to the history of man 
are brought to light from the ruins of ancient seats 
of power and dominion, if not civilization in our 
sense of the word, buried beneath the debris of 
unnumbered ages. It is only by making a local 
collection such as Mr. Beckwith made for us and 
for the Mississippi Valley that indubitable facts as 
to the institutions, culture and domestic arts exist- 
ing here before our age can be secured. 

Mr. Beckwith was a little over seventy-three 
years old when he died at Charleston. He had a 
robust and vigorous constitution. During most of 



134 Thomas Beckwith 

his life he enjoyed good health, although at times 
he greatly exposed himself. He was a little over 
medium size, had a light complexion, sandy hair, 
blue and piercing eyes. He was retiring in dispo- 
sition, slow in speech, and his walk showed delib- 
eration. He was not addicted to idle or frivolous 
conversation, which is so prevalent in small towns. 
He did not lounge around in public places. He was 
very independent in expressing his opinions on all 
questions of the day, and intolerent of all dishonest 
conduct. The habitual expression of his face was 
somewhat severe, and anyone who saw him realized 
that he was not a man to be trifled with in any- 
thing. Life with him was always real and earnest. 
He had only a few friends, because his intellectual 
life and ideals separated him from most of his 
neighbors. He was studious and read much. A 
few years before his death he gathered together 
much material and made many notes relating to 
the early settlers of Mississippi county, and this 
material he expected would be revised and arranged 
and then published. He also collected many of the 
farming and domestic implements of the early pio- 
neers, as well as household effects, and these also he 



4 



Thomas Beckwith 135 

gave to the Normal School, expecting these things 
to become the nucleus of a local Southeast Missouri 
museum, showing the progress of our people since 
those early days. He had a fine and valuable mis- 
cellaneous library, but his collection of works on 
archaeology and anthropology is of exceptional 
value. He was a great hunter and spent weeks in 
hunting camps, and no doubt on these occasions 
greatly exposed himself. All who came in contact 
with him he treated with great courtesy. Although 
as a large land owner he rented much land, no 
doubt sometimes to persons of uncertain honesty, 
he had no lawsuits with his tenants, nor did he 
oppress them on account of crop failures by over- 
flows, or when otherwise without their fault they 
were unable to meet their obligations. In all the 
relations of life he was an eminently just and fair 
man. Such in life was Thomas Beckwith. 



Thomas Beckwith was born January 24, 1840. Died June 7, 1913. 



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